


A Distant Horizon

by what_alchemy



Series: Not Even the Stars [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four men. Two realities. One love. A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/170977">Not Even the Stars</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Distant Horizon

He was an old man now, a man whose hands were gnarled and thick about the knuckles, veins gone ropy and bulging with age. The skin that stretched loose over delicate bones was withered and papery, dry and translucent. He had slowed a great deal over the past few years, time, isolation and guilt aging him as surely as the uncanny disorientation of having found himself thrown back into an alternate timeline where his steps were just off, his sight slightly skewed as if peering at the world through spectacles he’d outgrown. As time comes to all living things, time had come to Spock, but in his side his heart ticked on, and he set himself to righting what he’d made wrong.

He had his own wing in Sarek’s house, his father unwilling during desperate times to relinquish kin in any form he found it. In the rapidly expanding New Vulcan Science Academy, he had his own lab, and his own budget. In the council of elders, he had his own place, and no one made mention of his tendency to smile or frown or shrug if the urge came to him. But he was alone in all things, his adopted name, Selek, spoken in hushed tones. In communities so small, there were no secrets, and thus he stood outside the bounds of the colony’s wasted, cobbled society as the one who had been instrumental in a collective grief so profound that it crippled those who survived the psychic backlash of six billion dead in an instant. The citizens of New Vulcan knew who he was and gave him wide berth.

Spock accepted it as his due.

His old hands moved over the keyboards with a sluggishness that should have frustrated and alarmed him, but he was only patient with his newfound limitations. This formula was not yielding the proper results; there would be a wormhole, yes, but anything sucked into it would spend an excruciating nanosecond being turned inside out.

Spock sat back and rubbed at tired eyes. He grew fatigued much faster, now.

He blinked away gummy blurriness, but not before his distorted vision muddled one flawed formula into another on the screen. Spock sat up straighter, brain prickling. He wrestled with unyielding numbers and rigid formulas for so long his sense of time wavered and drooped like a flower in a drought. But then, long after other scientists had shut down their stations and caught transport to their homes, long after Spock’s stomach had begun to lament audibly its state of emptiness, it was there, full and clear on his computer screen, a Frankenstein string of letters and numbers and symbols suddenly obvious: the way home.

Spock let himself laugh.

I

In front of Jim was a request from Admiral Kirk to drop him off in San Francisco when the _Enterprise_ would dock for repairs in a month. She’d been hit pretty badly in the last skirmishes with Romulans on the outskirts of the neutral zone, and a starbase wouldn’t do. Jim had been wondering what the man would decide, and he was surprised to see he hadn’t requested Jim leave him on New Vulcan. The way Old-Spock told it, those two had been BFF, and hadn’t Jim been so bitterly envious to hear the ambassador speak of someone named James Kirk that way? To see “San Francisco” scribbled in familiar script under “destination” filled him with a little bit of self-satisfaction that he would never tell anyone about.

When his alternate first arrived in a scrambled transporter beam two weeks ago, Jim was excited to meet him and combine their powers for the forces of awesome. Actually, first Jim ordered him quarantined, polygraphed, and tested for alien DNA, but he should have known the guy would hack his way out of the brig, and by the time he emerged again, clothes inexplicably torn and whiskey eyes somehow deadened, Jim knew he was who he said he was and instead of excitement, he felt a creeping disquiet about the man.

He suddenly understood why Spock shied away from Old-Spock, though they were sometimes forced to interact on family or New Vulcan business. Admiral Kirk represented more than an assurance that Jim was capable of reaching forty without succumbing to a fiery death by recklessness – he represented lessons not yet learned, mistakes not yet made, hurts not yet inflicted, but all inevitable in spirit if not to the letter. Did Spock look into familiar brown eyes and cringe to see the depth of pain endured? Jim had borne more than his share of heartache, he’d always thought, but when he met his alternate properly, when he shook his hand and met his gaze, he knew by the chill that hollowed out his stomach that the admiral might just have him beat.

So he was avoiding him. So he hoisted him off on Spock when he tried to come off all admiral-knows-best on unauthorized visits to the bridge. So he’d taken to avoiding Spock too for the last few months, so what? Maybe the pair of them would be two peas in a pod, and Jim wouldn’t have to think about either of them and how uncomfortable they made him in different ways, and when they finally dropped Kirk off on Earth, Jim could go back to being blissfully unaware of how his own face looked when marked with such bitterness.

The door buzzed and Jim’s heart leapt before he remembered that it wouldn’t be Spock – not since “the incident,” as he secretly called the mortifying debacle from three months ago. The unit that had been Jim-and-Spock, whatever friendship they’d been building for the two years of the mission, was all smoke and rubble ever since Spock had stumbled through a weirdly emotional declaration of his “intentions to court” Jim, and Jim had subsequently dashed out of his quarters. Never mind that he hated to pull rank off duty and never did. Never mind that seeing the desolation flit across Spock’s face for a split second destroyed something warm in Jim’s own chest. Never mind that he’d regretted it ever since it happened, but couldn’t find a way to make it better without rejecting Spock all over again. Because Jim wanted to be friends, and Spock wanted way, way more, and the two were mutually exclusive. In petty, lonely moments, Jim was still angry at him for it. He’d _liked_ being friends with Spock; why wasn’t that enough?

The door buzzed again and Jim shook off those thoughts, calling out to allow entry. When it was McCoy and disappointment bloomed hot and shameful in Jim’s gut, he squashed the ensuing guilt and plastered on his widest grin.

“Bones! What brings you here on this fine night?”

McCoy looked surlier than usual, and Jim went to retrieve a bottle of Saurian brandy to tame the beast.

“It’s that bastard of an alternate you, Jim. I don’t know what’s up his ass, but whatever it is, it’s gnawed its way to his brain and taken bites out of whatever it is that makes you nice most of the time.” He snorted and accepted the tumbler Jim pushed into his hands. “As if we needed a _less_ stable version of you.” He plonked himself down at Jim’s table, and Jim took his customary seat opposite him.

“Hey,” he said with a pout, “I’m stable.”

McCoy waved his hand in dismissal.

“All I’m saying is he comes into sickbay all snide and biting when he’s got nothing to do, and it’s not even good natured. Chris almost slapped him one earlier, and then I think she went away to cry. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“What did he say?”

McCoy shook his head and leaned forward.

“Something about how Spock will never want her. Jesus, Jim, no one needs to hear something like that, even if it’s as plain as the gay on Spock’s face.”

Jim swallowed against the lurch in his throat. He hadn’t told McCoy about the incident – had never figured out a way to keep both his and Spock’s dignity in tact by sharing it, even with his best friend. Jim wondered if that fact of Spock’s homosexuality was apparent to everyone but him – and Christine Chapel. Idly he imagined holding meetings for the Wishful Thinking Club, where he and Chapel would delude themselves for an hour a week that Spock was straight and in love with the right one of them and wanted to crack beers and play fantasy football – or whatever, fill out reports – with the other. He became aware that McCoy was staring at him expectantly after the pause had stretched too long, and he fished for something appropriate to say.

“That’s out of line.”

“You’re damn right it is. And I can’t even talk to him about it – he’s not on active duty and has no compulsion to follow my orders when I tell him to come see me in a medical capacity and not just to bug me. He’s not even—” McCoy face grimaced. “He told me I’m not his Bones and I can fuck off with my bullshit psychoanalyzing. I think there might be more wrong than a lapse in gentility here. And considering your aversion to therapists, trying to get him to see Dr. Shandhir might be like trying to bathe a bobcat. You should talk to him.”

“Me? Christ, Bones, what the hell can I say? And why would he listen? To him I’m just a dumbass kid who made good faster than him.”

McCoy swirled the brandy in his glass and gave a little shrug.

“You’re him. You have insight into him that no one else possibly could. Whatever it is, it might be something you understand, and he’ll tell you.”

Jim pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed his face before blinking at McCoy from across the table. His own glass of brandy remained untouched on the table between them.

“I really don’t think it’s that simple. He’s… he weirds me out. And maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but he just seems… broken? Hurt, somehow, that I can’t relate to, and I can hardly talk to him. I _don’t_ talk to him.”

McCoy pressed his lips together in the flattened-frog exasperated look he reserved only for Jim.

“You make Spock talk to him.”

Jim tucked his lips back behind his teeth and shrugged.

“Jesus, Jim. I’m not sure how great an idea that is,” McCoy said.

“Why not? They get along all right, far as I can tell.”

“Except Spock’s looking a little worn around the edges since the good admiral’s come to stay, too. And he’s signed out a dermal regenerator twice.”

Jim frowned.

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me look at him. Said it was ‘no concern of mine.’ Hmph.”

“Hold on, Bones.” Jim stood and felt all his blood leave his top half. He steadied himself with his hands on the table and fixed McCoy with an intense glare. “You think that bastard is _hurting Spock_? Beating him or something? Oh my God!”

“No. No, Jim, calm down.” McCoy thumped the tabletop as if ordering a dog to heel. “Nothing like that. I thought I saw something suspiciously like a lovebite on Spock’s shoulder the other day when I gave him the Morvanian bat rabies inoculation and figured he’s finally got someone paying him a bit of kindly attention, and I was a hair’s breadth away from congratulating him just to watch him turn colors. But it’s – Jim, if it’s the admiral, he’s volatile, and angry, and it’s something that has the potential to go down in some serious flames.”

Jim collapsed in the chair as if drained of strength.

“I don’t understand.”

“What part? If it’s about how you would never hurt Spock like that and can’t wrap your mind around it, yeah. I mean. There’s rough sex and there’s rough sex. Normally I’d trust you to know the difference and be safe, but we’ve established that he is not you.”

“Which invalidates your ‘I should talk to him because I’m him’ theory.”

“Shove it, Jim. I’m being serious. ”

“ _I’m_ being serious!” Jim said in a rush. “I’m not – I’m not _into guys_ , Bones! The fact that the admiral _is_ and might be going too far with kinky bondage games or something with Spock makes me – makes me – I don’t know, but it makes me something not good, and, no, I definitely _don’t understand_. But it proves once and for all that I’m not him.”

McCoy’s eyebrow was ticking dangerously close to ‘crazy mountain man who makes clothes out of trespassers.’

“What?” Jim snapped.

“You don’t like guys _at all_?”

Jim burned as if McCoy were accusing him of something illicit.

“No! What? What gave you the impression that I did? Oh my God, have I been giving off gay vibes?”

McCoy held up his hands as if he could stopper Jim’s mouth with one gesture.

“ _‘Gay vibes’_ — for Christ’s sake, Jim, what year are you from?”

“I just – I’m not into it, okay? I don’t care who anyone else fucks, but for me, it’s women all the way. End of story. Anyway, this is not about me, this is about bizarro me who may or may not be hitting it with my first, and hitting it too hard.”

McCoy’s sigh was a gruff rumble, and Jim felt a profound relief when he saw the moment McCoy let the subject go.

“I think if there were anything seriously wrong, Spock would have the wherewithal – the _logic_ — to stop it, or get help stopping it from one of us. I’m concerned more about the admiral’s state of mind in all this. I’m worried it might be some kind of breakdown, and we’re watching it happen without trying to help.”

“So he’s suddenly fucking dudes like some kind of mid-life crisis and Spock got caught in the crossfire?”

“Jesus, Jim! No! The fact of who he – that has nothing to do with anything. What’s the matter with you?”

Jim clenched his fists and pushed them under his armpits. He hiked his shoulders in another shrug.

“Nothing – nothing.”

“If you had some kind of secret homophobia thing going on, the psych evals would have caught it and you’d never have made captain. So what’s your deal right now, Jim?”

Jim closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Can we not talk about this? What about Admiral Kirk – he’s the one with the mid-life crisis.”

“Or depression. Which is treatable. But being a jackass doesn’t have a clear course of action other than a solid slap upside the head.”

Jim glared at his best friend, who had no qualms about glaring back with those lighted eyes of his all bugged out.

“Look. I just – it bothers me, okay? The thought of Spock… with him. I mean, I thought – it doesn’t matter what I thought. I don’t like that he’s not treating Spock right. And I don’t like…. fuck, Bones, let’s be real right now: I don’t like that I might wake up one day and think to myself, ‘hmm, sure could go for some cock today.’” Didn’t like to think that he already had, and had viciously stomped down on the entire idea a long time ago.

McCoy was silent, and he tipped the rest of the brandy down his throat. He let out a slow, deliberate breath.

“Would it really be the end of the world?” he asked, and Jim recognized the mildness of his tone as his ‘I’m a caring doctor, really – now let me strap you down for this painful procedure,’ voice.

Jim shook his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just – it’s still not easy for people, you know? To be gay, or bi, or pan, or whatever. Plenty of places in the universe still judge you. Riverside – Riverside was like that. This kid, Jordan Sanders. Man, everyone really ripped him up, you know? And adults would hardly do anything. Anyone in a position of power would do this whole winking disapproval, slap on the wrist type thing to anyone who messed with him. Total bullshit. Jordan – I don’t know what happened to him. He got beat real bad and dropped out before graduation. But I remember being so fucking _glad_ , Bones, that I wasn’t like that. Like him.” _And terrified that I was_ , he didn’t add.

McCoy was nodding, his brows drawn together in a thoughtful furrow.

“I get that. I do, Jim. But you can’t go around saying things like Kirk went crazy, and that’s why he’s up with the gay sex. You get that, right?”

Jim swallowed against the bile that threatened to rise in his gullet.

“I know. Okay? But it’s hard, no matter what I say, not to think of him as this future me. And then it’s hard for me to think about what that means for me, and my sexuality, or whatever. And Spock – Spock doesn’t deserve… whatever this is. A guy who’s using him to exorcise his demons, and then another guy who couldn’t possibly… be what he wants.” Because even if there was just the tiniest chance that _maybe_ Jim could… prefer the company of men, someone unsure and afraid was the last thing Spock needed.

McCoy’s eyebrow rose again.

“Did he say something to you?”

“Ugh.”

“Jim.”

“Yes, okay?” Jim threw his hands up. “Yes. He asked, a few months ago. For us to be together. I said no.”

McCoy sat back and watched him with a calculating expression. Jim hazarded a glance at him.

“You gonna berate me about it?”

“No, Jim. Can’t force feelings that aren’t there, though I hope you tried to spare the ones he professes not to have. I _had_ wondered why you weren’t attached at the hip with the hobgoblin anymore. Figured it was his fault.”

“Why would it be his fault? Aren’t you always telling me what a jackass I am, fucking things up?”

“Aw, kid, come off it. I just meant Spock has a tendency to be… brusque. Literal. Accidentally rude. Irritatingly single-minded. Vaguely insulting towards humans. I could go on. I thought maybe he’d finally mentioned your lack of logic one too many times.”

“Well, he didn’t,” Jim huffed, all indignation. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s perfect.”

“He sure can pick ’em.”

Jim scoffed. “Asshole.”

“Jackass.”

“Dick.”

“You realize you called him perfect just now?”

“Fuck off, Bones.”

McCoy regarded him with a calculating look for a moment before he stood and put his glass down on the table.

“Listen, Jim,” he said. “Thanks for the drink. I needed it. Now I’m asking you to go talk to Spock, or the other you, and figure out a way we can get him sorted out. No one’s asking you to start some kind of manly romance with Spock. We can even forget we had this conversation if it makes you feel better. Just – go figure out what’s wrong, and fix it. Okay?”

“That’s not my job, Bones.”

The doors to Jim’s quarters slid open and McCoy smirked at him from where he paused in the jamb.

“Everything on this boat is your job, _Captain_.” And the doors slid shut behind him.

Jim groaned and set his head down on the table with a blunt smack. Then it occurred to him: McCoy’s hypothesis that Kirk and Spock were an item could be completely off, based on a false assumption. Maybe Spock had some other new boyfriend sucking shapes into his skin, and Kirk was operating on an outlier of his usual emotional keel and it had nothing to do with Spock whatsoever. All he had to do was ask.

When Spock opened the door he was wearing only his trousers and black thermal undershirt. Somehow seeing his forearms bare, dusted with fine black hair, seemed an intimacy Jim should not be afforded, and he forced his gaze to Spock’s face.

“Jim.” His voice held a note of surprise. Then, more carefully, “Captain.”

“Hey Spock,” Jim said. “May I?” He gestured toward Spock’s quarters, and Spock nodded and stepped back. Jim walked in and looked around. It was the same as it had ever been, clean and Spartan and smelling of Spock. Spock herded him toward the work table.

“Would you care for a refreshment, Captain?”

Jim waved his hand.

“No, no, that’s all right. How’ve you been?” They sat across from each other

“I am functioning as usual.” There was a pause. “And yourself, Captain?”

Jim sent him a wan smile.

“I’m fine. Fine.” Were they once close enough to share thoughts and smiles freely? Or, what passed for a smile on Spock – a lifting of his expression, a softening of the eyes. Their friendship seemed like a long ago fantasy Jim had fabricated in some vivid day dream. Now it was as if it had never happened.

Spock was staring at him.

“Do you require something?” he asked.

“Sorry.” Jim dropped his eyes. “Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the admiral.”

Spock stiffened, and Jim felt a terrible weight settle on his chest.

“What is your query?”

Jim drew a breath and met guarded brown eyes.

“I know you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and I wondered if you could give some insight about his state of mind. He seems….”

“Unhappy,” Spock finished for him.

Jim nodded. “Yeah.”

Spock sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together in front of his mouth. Elegant brows drew downward in contemplation.

“He is struggling with certain adjustments he has had to make in his life,” Spock began. “His promotion was unsought and came with a grounding, and his personal life had recently taken a terrible blow. These things, alongside the disorientation of finding himself in this reality, have converged to make his command of his humors precarious.”

“Spock. Is he going to be a problem?”

Spock lifted his head and placed his chin atop his clasped hands. He regarded Jim as if he were a curiosity on a newly discovered planet.

“If you are asking me, Captain, whether I believe he is a danger to himself or others, the answer is no, I do not.”

“Good,” Jim said. He exhaled and felt lighter. “That’s good. It makes me feel better. But do you think he needs help at all? I mean – do you think I should try to get him to see Shandhir, talk things out?”

Spock almost smiled, and it was almost sad.

“Would you go to a psychotherapist if a younger version of yourself demanded it?”

Jim grunted out a harsh facsimile of a laugh.

“I guess not. But I mean… we should do what we can to help him. He might be too proud, but Shandhir could help.”

“Perhaps I can broach the subject with him when next I see him.”

“Thanks, Spock.” A cautious smile stole over Jim’s face. “Me and Bones would really appreciate it.”

Spock dropped his hands to his lap and looked down.

“Of course, Captain,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

Jim’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. His mouth went dry and his palms clammy, but he had to ask. He had to push the question past his lips; he had to _know_.

“Are you fucking him, Spock?”

Spock’s head snapped up and his eyes were round and disbelieving. His face had taken on a frightening pallor even as the apples of his cheeks flushed green.

“E– excuse me?”

“It was a theory. That maybe you were letting him… do things to you.”

“That is none of your business, Captain. You may leave my quarters now.”

Jim’s eyes flashed.

“You don’t dismiss me, First Officer.”

“Respectfully, Captain, my personal life is none of your concern.” They both stood, and maybe they were too close, now that Jim could feel the puffs of Spock’s quick breath on his face, but Jim was shaking with sudden certainty of the truth yet unacknowledged. “Please leave,” Spock said.

“No. I want to hear it from your mouth.”

“I refuse to answer. The subject is none of your business.”

“The hell it isn’t!” Jim snarled. “Jesus, Spock – I didn’t take you for the casual sex type. Anyone will do, huh, long as his name’s Jim Kirk?” They were so close, Spock’s heat poured into him. “You’d let him destroy you, just for a second-hand taste of me?”

Spock stepped closer still until Jim was forced to step back and give ground. He found himself pressed against the door to Spock’s quarters, chest to chest with their occupant, eyes to blazing eyes.

“I find it curious, Captain, that you profess not to want me, and yet at the notion that another might, you fly into an irrational rage. That is your burden, not mine.”

“Is he any good? Everything you ever wanted? Answer me!”

Spock’s eyes burned, hot and black, and inside himself Jim felt a knot clench and unclench in a convulsive nausea.

“This is not ship’s business, and thus I have no obligation to answer you, Captain,” Spock said in a low growl. “I bid you goodnight with the hopes that you return to reason come ship’s morning.”

“You smarmy fucking self-righteous son of a –”

“You will not complete that sentence. You will go to your bunk and sleep and leave me in peace.”

“Does he look enough like me? Huh, Spock?”

Spock pressed the doors open and Jim stumbled out, graceless. When he looked up, the doors were sliding shut again, but Jim heard the single, clipped syllable Spock bit out before he locked Jim out.

“No.”

II

Spock paced behind his door after throwing Kirk into the corridor. Hot turmoil had flooded his senses, and he could not center himself. He crossed over to his bedspace and settled cross legged in front of it. He straightened his spine and closed his eyes, and he tried to tighten his awareness around the column of his body. But Jim’s scent and Jim’s anger and Jim’s jealousy had bled into Spock’s consciousness, a chaos that rattled him. He couldn’t find the kernel of peace that meditation required. He bolted to his feet and in under five minutes, he was at Admiral Kirk’s guest quarters three decks below, buzzing for entry.

When Spock was in, he found Kirk shirtless on his side in the bed. Kirk tilted a smile up at him and extended an arm in invitation. Spock stripped as he dashed forward, and by the time he sank in beside the admiral, he was naked, feverish, and hard enough to burst at a single touch. But Kirk’s grasp around the base of his cock thwarted him.

Kirk pushed him down on his back and levered himself over Spock, set their hips in tension.

“Tell me you want me,” he said in a low rumble.

“I want you,” Spock gasped.

Kirk gripped his hair. “Always.”

“Always, always want you, Jim.”

Kirk kissed him hard, and on the edges of Kirk’s teeth and in the consumptive heat of his hands, Spock found his kernel of peace and let himself be subsumed.

Afterward, they lay on their backs panting, glistening with sweat and semen. Their shoulders and arms touched, and Spock could feel Kirk’s despondency, tempered for now with satiation. Kirk sat up and rummaged around in the bedside table. When he turned back around, he had a soft cloth and set to wiping Spock down, careful not to go against the grain of his chest hair, and gentle when he moved down to his anus. Sometimes, even in the tumult of their affair, there were quiet moments like this one during which Spock imagined they were different people, people who had chosen each other without the spectres of others at their backs. Spock felt warm as he watched Kirk take care of him with singular concentration. He brought up a hand and traced the line of Kirk’s jaw, his cheekbone. When he looked up at Spock, his eyes were gold.

“Are you sore?” he asked.

“Not… at the site of penetration. My left nipple, perhaps.”

Kirk shifted to straddle him, knees on either side of his hips as he leaned down to inspect the nipple in question. He pressed a kiss to its abraded surface. Illogical and unfounded as it was, Spock’s nipple did feel soothed.

“Sorry,” Kirk said. “Got a little carried away.”

“It’s nothing,” Spock said, and he stroked through Kirk’s bronze hair, rubbed at his shoulders. Kirk sighed and stretched out to lay his head on Spock’s chest and tangle their legs. He set his hand over Spock’s heart.

“I’m going to Earth,” he said. “Just put in the request transmission to mini-me. He’s probably ecstatic to get me off his girl.”

Spock went rigid under him and he craned his neck up.

“What?” he asked.

“He visited me this evening.”

Kirk got off of Spock and settled on his side next to him.

“That why you were in here like a crazy person?”

Spock shut his eyes.

“I apologize,” he said. He felt Kirk’s hand on his cheek, the warm press of Kirk’s lips on his own.

“Don’t apologize. It’s not like we both don’t know how this works.”

Spock kissed him deeper, clasped his hand in his hair and anchored him to plunder his mouth. Kirk gave way, but he pulled back at the stirrings of Spock’s penis against his hip.

“Want me to suck you?” he asked.

Spock nodded, and when Kirk set himself to the task with intoxicating enthusiasm, Spock’s hand drifted down until it covered Kirk’s eyes. When he came twenty minutes later, three of Kirk’s fingers buried in his slack hole, he felt wrung out, purged of everything that gave him strength, and he lay with his arm slung over his eyes while Kirk licked away all his ejaculate.

Kirk settled at his side and rubbed a soothing hand up and down Spock’s stomach.

“Good?”

Spock nodded weakly. Kirk put his head on Spock’s shoulder and his arm around his chest.

“My Spock liked that too,” he murmured. Spock was silent, and for a moment he slipped into a dream in which he was elderly, and Kirk kissed him with aching reverence. When his eyes fluttered open moments later, his heart was beating too fast.

“My Captain had a request of me,” he said. Kirk grunted. “He wished for me to compel you to see Dr. Shandhir.”

Kirk grunted again, half laugh. “She’s…”

“She’s what?”

“Earnest. Too damned earnest – I don’t even know how she can function, being so earnest all the time.”

“Her empathetic nature should not be a deterrent to your speaking with her, should you find yourself in need of an impartial third party.”

Kirk shift and propped himself up against the pillow.

“No. No, she looks at you all big doe eyes and sympathetic expression, no matter what you say. You could say ‘I just killed a man in cold blood,’ and she would –”

“You would never kill a man in cold blood, Admiral.”

Kirk hummed out a short laugh.

“You’re right there, Mr. Spock. My point is… it’s hard to explain. Shandhir – she doesn’t see how dark things get. It’s almost like she doesn’t see the terrible facets of human nature at all.”

“She has an advanced medical degree and is a highly prized mind in her field. I doubt she is unfamiliar with… darkness. Rather, her faith in the essential goodness of her patients overcomes that darkness.”

“I know, I know,” Kirk said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve just always felt bad talking to her, like I’m soiling someone too good for the world. It ends up heaping guilt on top of whatever I’m supposed to be telling her about.”

“You have spoken to her before, then?”

“Yeah. Yeah. My McCoy was always trying to get me to air out my feelings after a bad mission.”

“He cares for you.”

“And I remember to be grateful, most of the time.”

“You could speak to our McCoy. He cares as well, despite his churlish nature.” They both knew speaking to Spock wouldn’t help.

Kirk stared down at him. Spock wondered at what subtle physical differences existed between himself and the one Kirk had loved. He wondered what Kirk saw superimposed onto his face.

“I know I’m not all right, Spock,” Kirk said. “But I also know whining to McCoy about how my lover left me isn’t gonna help. Didn’t help the first time, won’t help now. I just have to suck it up and try not to look like I’m coming apart at the seams.” He paused. “Probably shouldn’t have been such a bastard to Chapel.”

“What did you do to her?”

Kirk crossed his arms but sent Spock a sidelong smirk.

“You just drive people crazy no matter what universe. I felt like hurting someone else who couldn’t have you, either. It was a shitty move, and I’ll apologize tomorrow.”

Spock hesitated before he said, “You can, Admiral. Have me, that is.”

Kirk raised both eyebrows at him.

“You don’t want me, Spock. You want that pup chasing his tail three decks up, for whatever reason.”

“I meant my counterpart on New Vulcan.”

Kirk’s demeanor transformed in an instant. He flushed and scowled, body going stiff beside Spock.

“Look, I’ve told you –”

“You have told me and told me and not listened to me in return,” Spock said.

“Spock—”

“Hush. My counterpart is the Spock from your timeline, though he has surpassed you in age. He has not been explicit with me about the details of your union, but I know that it was a long one, and a committed one, and one that brought him joy even through times of sorrow. I know he has been without you for a long time, and I know that he would be – overcome to welcome you into his arms again.”

Kirk’s stare was a blank emptiness, but from where Spock’s fingertips rested on his arm came a wave of grief mingled with anger. The sensation was nauseating, but Spock pressed on.

“If it is as you say, and he went to Gol, then it was an unsuccessful venture and he returned to you. You were bonded in the way of the Vulcan people – mind, body, spirit. Admiral, do you believe in coincidence?” Kirk’s eyes had darkened, and he did not speak. “I find the odds of your appearance in this reality, where he also resides, on this ship, which can transport you to him easily, to be so astronomical that I cannot calculate them. It is a gift, Admiral, and one that you should not dismiss in anger.”

The corners of Kirk’s mouth drew down, and he clenched his jaw.

“I don’t know how to forgive him for this,” he said in a whisper. “I can’t.”

Spock leaned over and kissed him, soft and slow, and he pressed his palm to Kirk’s in a sensual slide. They had not kissed so tenderly in the two weeks since beginning their affair, but Spock wanted this moment to be soft, to be something warm for two men who grappled with such cold. He wanted it to be the last thing they remembered about their time together.

“You can,” he said when he pulled back. “You have, and you will again. I will set up a transmission with visual for you.” Kirk’s eyes shone too brightly from his flushed face. He could not speak, but nodded his assent.

Spock stood and gathered the clothing that was strewn on the floor between the door and the bedroom space. He pulled them on, back to Kirk, but he could feel Kirk watching him. Admiring his body. Spock pushed down the curious mixture of gratification and resentment that watchful gaze elicited. At the comm device on the table beyond the bedroom partition, Spock’s fingers flew over the commands he’d memorized. He felt Kirk at his back, and then the weight Kirk’s hand on the back of his neck.

“Thanks,” Kirk said. Spock left the seat and faced Kirk, who was now fully clothed as well. He was about eye level with Spock’s nose, but Spock’s initial sense of disorientation at their differing heights had passed. He contemplated reaching out to touch him on the shoulder, to prolong what few things could be good and pure between them, but his arms remained at his sides, and he moved past Kirk toward the door. Before he left, he watched Kirk sink into the chair in front of the view screen and press the button that would send his transmission request. When the screen flickered and the wizened face of his counterpart appeared on it bleary with sleep, Spock exited in silence.

III

“Jim?” came the hoarse voice. Spock’s hair was askew, and he blinked over and over. Kirk realized that he’d woken him, and he wasn’t as quick to alertness anymore.

Kirk’s chest constricted. It _was_ his Spock – definitely his Spock, by the bony prominence of his nose and the strong, sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, recognizable though age had withered his skin, clouded his eyes and tarnished his hair. Kirk felt a thickness gather at the base of his throat

“Hey, Spock,” he croaked. “It’s me.”

Kirk listened to his breathing and drank in the sight of him as he came awake.

“ _T’hy’la_?” Brown eyes opened wider, and his whole expression lifted. He smiled, and something hard and aching inside Kirk broke at the sight. He pressed his palm to the viewer before he could stop himself.

“Spock. God, look at you.”

“I don’t understand, Jim. You are not – What’s happened?”

“Transporter malfunction. As usual. I – I’ve been here two weeks.” Suddenly it seemed a shameful, ridiculous interval to have waited to hear the sound of his lover’s voice.

Across the light-years, Spock pressed his hand to his own viewer to match Kirk’s. All Kirk could feel was the cool of the screen.

“How old are you?” Spock asked without masking his awe.

“Too close to forty, my friend. What about you?”

“I’ve lived one hundred and sixty years, Jim.”

Kirk’s breath left him and he dropped his hand, into his lap. He leaned closer to the view screen.

“You look great,” he said. “Perfect.”

Spock smiled at him again and took his hand away too, and the pain of not being together was huge and unbearable and tore at Kirk’s heart.

“You are a flatterer,” Spock said. “And a biased one, at that.”

Kirk shook his head. He knew what he really was: a low thing, selfish and wallowing so thoroughly in his own pain that he would inflict it on innocent others, on his own lover, just to feel less impotent.

“I’ve missed you. Spock, I’ve missed you so much, you don’t even know.” Kirk was horrified to find tears prickling hot at his eyes, and he steeled his entire body against them.

Spock cocked his head and the smile that threw Jim’s entire universe off kilter faded.

“Oh, Jim,” he said, barely audible. “I’ve left you to pursue the Kohlinar, haven’t I?”

Kirk could only nod and blink back the tears that threatened to spill.

“I’m sorry,” Spock said. “I have no more than that to offer, but to say that I was young, and foolish, and afraid. Know that I did come back to you. As I come into these final stages of my life, I rue every moment I spent away from you. Every moment I took myself away.”

Kirk gasped for breath and leaned closer to the view screen. Once again Spock’s hand came up as if to trace the lines of his face.

“Final stages? You’re not even old, for a Vulcan.”

He should have known what Spock would say by the sad smile he gave him now, something that he would never have permitted himself in the life they’d shared.

“Ah, but I am human as well, Jim,” he said. “I can admit as much, now. I have lived too long and loved too much to do otherwise.”

Kirk crossed his arms and shoved his shaking hands under his armpits.

“So what – you’re dying now? Mini-Spock’s theory that I was brought here to keep you company seems to be falling apart. I should go tell him how illogical he is.”

An eyebrow, much beloved, arched upward towards Spock’s severe bangs.

“Well. Hardly ‘dying,’ Jim. I am merely aware that there are more years behind me now than there are in front of me.”

Kirk managed a smile then.

“So if you lived a hundred fifty more years and outlived me two times over your statement would still stand.”

Spock didn’t seem to find that funny.

“I’ve become an old man, Jim,” he said. “My body grows infirm. My mind slows. I… I grow weary.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s not morbid. It’s simply how time works on all living things. _Kaadith_.”

Kirk inhaled, lungs quaking. The thought of Spock – any Spock – dying was enough to send full stores of fear crackling through his veins. Even a peaceful, old-age death seemed unthinkable.

“I hate this. I hate this conversation. How can you— I wish you were here, I wish I could touch you, smell you.” An urgency had crept into his voice and surged in his heart.

“What is the position of the _Enterprise_ now?” Spock asked, and Kirk knew he felt it too. “I could take a shuttle and rendezvous at the nearest starbase.”

“No. No, it’s fine. We’re going back to Earth for repairs and I could just come to you. Wait. Where’s New Vulcan?”

“Perhaps it would be best if I met you in San Francisco when you arrive. You’ll recall that Sarek has a condominium there. Are you amenable to that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. I think we’ve got an ETA of a month or so. Can you swing that?”

Spock was apparently feeling generous with the smiles tonight.

“Of course,” he said. “I would cross any distance for you, _t’hy’la_.”

Kirk barked out a laugh and wiped his face hastily when a tear or two finally dropped from his lashes.

“I wish I could pronounce that,” he said.

“Your butchering of the Vulcan language is endearing to me.”

Kirk basked in how easily this Spock expressed himself, basked in his praise and affection and the small smiles that shone so brightly in the darkness that had become Kirk’s life. But after an exchange of platitudes and flirtatious banter, there hung between them a certain heaviness that demanded acknowledgement.

“Spock.” Kirk struggled to contain all his disparate feelings – bursting joy, relief, love, yes, but resentment and despair lingered. And guilt. “Can you – I’m sorry, I know it’s a long time ago for you, but can you tell me? About Gol? And just… why?”

Kirk watched Spock sit back, chest expanding on a deep inhale. The desire to lay his head on that chest, to feel the thrum of the hummingbird heartbeat underneath his palm, was so acute that Kirk barely breathe.

“The depth of my love for you frightened me,” Spock said after a long silence. “I had spent so many years attempting to be wholly Vulcan, wholly logical, wholly unemotional, and yet it was when I was with you that I felt an abiding contentment and less personal conflict. I was happy, and at the time, I believed happiness to be inherently incompatible with being Vulcan.

“Jim, I don’t think you understand how difficult it was for me, a Vulcan among humans, and a very naïve one at that. You came into my life and insinuated yourself with such ease, became indispensible without even trying, that you didn’t see how thoroughly you…. shook me. I believed my happiness, my love for you, was an unforgivable flaw in my character, and when you asked me to marry you— Jim. Oh, Jim, I wanted to say yes. My acceptance almost burst unbidden from my lips before you had even finished asking.”

“So why didn’t you?” Kirk asked past the lump in his throat. “Why didn’t you just say yes, Spock?”

Spock’s eyes closed for a moment, and an ancient pain passed over his face. Kirk longed to soothe it away with gentle hands and soft kisses. But he also longed for him to have said yes all those months ago and for them to be indulging in a long honeymoon right now.

“I believed at the time that to say yes would be to turn away from my heritage, my upbringing, everything I had ever striven to be. I believed that to give in to my feelings for you in such an… irrevocable manner would be to undo myself completely. So I refused, and left for Gol to purge my emotions.”

Kirk met his eyes through the viewer, and he knew he must look wrecked.

“Jim,” Spock said. “I was a fool. I was a fool who had no idea what I was giving up, or the price I had to pay. I was a fool who prioritized the wrong things and discarded the right ones. I was a fool who could not look past my own pain and see how I’d caused yours. Please forgive me.”

Kirk touched the screen again, and Spock’s hand met him there. And it was easy, then. The easiest thing in the world.

“Of course, Spock,” he said. “Of course I forgive you.” Nothing could negate all the hurt inflicted, but a measure of the darkness he’d been carrying since he woke to find his cabin Spockless ebbed away.

“I am gratified,” Spock said, and smiled. It made Kirk’s heart swell. But its rhythm stuttered when he remembered another Spock, a younger Spock, a Spock whose tight body he’d been buried in not an hour before, whose placid face held fiery eyes touched by sadness.

“I have to tell you something,” Kirk said. The words caught in his throat.

“What is it, Jim?” Spock prompted him.

Kirk chewed the inside of his cheek. Then, “I’ve been sleeping with Spock.”

That sent both of Spock’s eyebrows upward.

“Indeed?” he said in a tone of mild surprise. “I thought perhaps he and the captain would have paired off by now.”

“That’s all you have to say about it? No recriminations, no scolding?” _No jealousy?_

“Jim, what would you have me say?” Spock asked, one hand lifted and spread in quite human a gesture of question. “You are an adult. Spock is an adult. Despite anyone’s feelings on the matter, you have not been beholden to me in any way. I have lain with others since our parting as well. Perhaps not recently, but I have. Would you hold that against me?”

“That’s different.”

“It is not.”

“I was angry at you.”

“Understandably.”

“I took advantage of his feelings for other-me.”

Spock sighed and lifted one shoulder in a minute shrug.

“Do you want me to reprimand you, Jim? It was not well done of you. There. Has that made you feel any more remorse than you already felt?”

Kirk passed a hand over his face, rubbed at his tired eyes.

“I knew I was being a shit and did it anyway,” he said. “Continued to do it. But even though he’s a little more…raw, he’s so much like you, Spock. The way he moves. His mannerisms. His voice.” Kirk cracked a grin. “His body. I’d tell myself – ‘just this one last time, and I’ll stop.’ But. There he’d be again, with his hands behind his back and his—” Kirk’s mouth snapped shut before he could say something humiliating. When he looked at Spock again, his lover was plainly amused, one corner of his mouth quirked up to match his eyebrow.

“I imagine I will never tire of hearing you enumerate my many virtues, Jim. Do go on.”

“You’re a dirty old goat, Spock.” That got him a full smile, complete with teeth. “Anyway. You have him to thank for finally knocking some sense into me. He made this call for me. He made me shut up and deal when I was too wrapped up in being mad at you to do anything but slowly implode.”

“I shall express my gratitude to him at our next meeting.”

“Mm, Spock meetings. Can I come? Can you kiss in front of me?”

“No.”

“You’re no fun at all.”

“Jim.”

“Hm?”

“Perhaps you can do him a favor in return.”

Spock had leaned forward, and Kirk matched him.

“I owe him one,” Kirk said. “Or ten.”

“This will do.”

“What is it, Spock?”

“The captain.” Brown eyes twinkled at him. “You are in a unique position to illuminate what he may have overlooked in a certain first officer of his.”

“Ah.” Kirk sat back with a laugh. “Translation: I’m in a unique position to tell him to stop angsting about his super-secret homosexual tendencies and get with the sexy Vulcan picture.”

“As humans are fond of saying: ‘your words, not mine.’”

Kirk cocked his head at Spock and smiled.

“I’m glad you’re here, Spock.”

“I’m glad _you’re_ here, _t’hy’la_.”

“I’ll take care of the rampant dumbassery emanating from the captain’s quarters. And I’ll call you later. And I’ll tell you exact arrival dates when I know them.”

“Of course, Jim.”

“Spock? I’ll be counting the days.”

Spock held out two fingers, and Kirk pressed his own to the screen.

“As will I, _ashayam_. Be well, Jim.”

“Bye, Spock. See you soon.”

The screen winked back to black, and Kirk was up and dressed and out the door in under a minute. His feet knew the way to his old quarters.

IV

Once upon a time, Jim might have taken this opportunity to get absolutely shit faced. He’d never liked coming face to face with his various shortcomings, and that was part of why he’d spent so much of his adolescence and early twenties obliterated – inspiring sour disappointment in everyone within a fifty-mile radius just by existing had a tendency to erode one’s self-respect. But he wasn’t a kid anymore; he was pushing thirty, a captain responsible for this starship and all the buzzing lives that played out their own private dramas inside it. He couldn’t justify pouring an entire bottle of whatever moonshine Scotty had last gifted him down his throat tonight, even if he weren’t set to be on the bridge for alpha shift in the morning.

Sometimes, being an adult sucked.

More than two hours after Spock dumped him into the corridor, Jim was still staring blankly at the document the admiral had sent him requesting drop-off in San Francisco. The pixelated letters didn’t even make words anymore. If he closed his eyes, all he saw was Spock’s face, aghast at Jim’s temerity and unable to hide it. Sleep wouldn’t come easy tonight.

 _San Francisco_ – the lines arranged themselves into a meaning, and that meaning was Bizarro Kirk off his ship, off his Spock, and off his mind, and it engendered such relief that Jim almost felt guilty. But he paused when he set stylus to screen to approve the request. Would Spock be happier if Kirk stayed on? He was certainly giving Spock something Jim couldn’t. Maybe those two crazy kids could cobble together something decent with each other once Kirk got in a few sessions with Shandhir and evened himself out. Maybe signing this meant signing away a measure of Spock’s contentment, and after all he’d done, didn’t Jim owe Spock a little bit of brightness? He’d have to lay down some ground rules: that he was in command of the _Enterprise_ , not Kirk, and that he never wanted to see them kiss or touch or, frankly, be anywhere near each other, and actually, if Kirk could stay away from Jim altogether, it would be pretty great. He fiddled with the stylus, flipped it around his fingers, tapped it on the table, and once again lines blurred and Spock’s breath hot on his face rose up in his memory and threatened to suffocate him. He didn’t hear his doors open or the intruder’s indiscreet footsteps. He jumped in his chair and swiveled around when he heard,

“This book sucks.”

It was Kirk, and he was short, and he was brandishing Jim’s vintage paper copy of _A Passage to India_ at him.

“Jesus!”

“I mean, Forster tries so hard, but it’s still all ‘exotic but inferior foreign people’ and ‘know your place,’ don’t you think?”

“What are you doing in my quarters?”

“Not the best material for a guy who has to make first contact. If you have some kind of burning need to read Forster, I think you should give _Maurice_ a go, don’t you?”

Jim scowled at the sly smirk and strode over to snatch the paperback away.

Kirk’s laugh was a mean, mocking bark. “Or are you still pretending a healthy cropping of chest hair and a good pair of broad shoulders don’t give you a hard-on?”

“I’ve read _Maurice_!” And how absurd was that statement? It was nothing like what he’d wanted to say.

Kirk made a low sound of feigned contemplation. He turned back around to look at Jim’s bookshelf, fists anchored on hips.

“Didn’t like it enough to bring it, though?”

Jim crossed his arms, _A Passage to India_ bending in his tight grip.

“Limited space,” he said, curt. He shoved the book back into its place. Kirk half turned toward him and leveled a wry, disturbingly flirtatious smile at him. It curdled Jim’s insides.

“And yet _A Passage to India_ looks like it’s barely been cracked.”

“Are you here just to insult my collection? You can leave, you know. I’m pretty busy.”

“Yeah, all that wool-gathering you were doing looked really urgent.”

Jim’s lip curled in a sour grimace.

“What do you want?”

Kirk pivoted to face him full-on, and when he crossed his arms, they stood as twin images in sideshow mirrors, uncanny and just slightly off.

“I want you to stop acting like a baby,” Kirk said. “You’re, what, coming up on twenty-eight? Get your head out of your ass.”

Jim scoffed.

“You’re choosing right now to come tell me how much better you were at everything than me? Fuck off, _Admiral_ , I’m _not_ you, and you can kiss my ass.”

“And what a fine ass it is, _Captain_ , but I think I’ll restrain myself. No, this is a very Marley kind of visit.” He plucked _A Christmas Carol_ off the shelf and tossed it at Jim. He caught it on reflex and looked back up at Kirk with a frown.

“Showing me the error of _your_ ways now, Admiral?”

Kirk rolled his eyes.

“You act like I don’t know you at all.”

“You don’t!” Jim shoved the Dickens back at him.

“I do!” Kirk snapped, and he smacked the shelf with the book, though the light smack it produced was less climactic than he’d probably hoped. “I know you think about Spock when you jerk off, and I know you pretend you didn’t the moment it’s all over.”

Jim’s eyes went wide, and he found himself crowded into a bulkhead for the second time that night, his alternate advancing on him like a predator enflamed by the scent of fear. He pushed at Kirk’s shoulders, but the admiral wouldn’t let up.

“I know you think about what everyone’s reactions to your giving in to your feelings would be except the ones who matter: yours and Spock’s.”

“Shut up.”

“I know you’ve never come so hard with a woman as you would _by yourself_ after a workout with Spock.”

“Stop, just fucking stop—”

“I know you used to imagine Jordan Sanders sucking your cock and that you thought about sucking his more times than you could ever admit to.”

Jim’s stomach flipped. “Don’t—”

“I know you were one of the ones who watched and did _absolutely nothing_ while that bastard Krytoph and his thugs kicked the shit out of him the last day he ever came to school.”

“Fuck you!” Jim took a swing, and it landed on Kirk’s pert nose. Blood bloomed under Jim’s fist and Kirk crumpled to the floor. He wrapped his arms around Jim as he went down, though, and Jim fell heavy on top of his alternate. They both grunted on impact, and Kirk shoved Jim off of himself and clambered on top of him, pinning him down with a knee in the stomach and his hands on his shoulders. Jim lay panting, bewildered, Kirk’s blood, _his_ blood, dripping down onto his face and gold shirt. They stared at each other wild eyed for a long moment.

“I know what happened to Jordan Sanders.”

“What?” Jim whispered, voice breaking.

Kirk sighed and got off him, propped himself against the bulkhead. He prodded at his nose and Jim pulled himself up, leaned back on his hands.

“I don’t think you broke it, at least,” Kirk grumbled.

“Jim,” Jim prompted him. He needed to hear it. Needed to know what had become of the fey boy who’d first stirred his blood and shame. Needed to know if there was more guilt to be borne on his account.

Kirk met his eyes, and for the first time Jim saw not banked fury or despair, but a guilelessness he thought was foreign to his own nature.

“Nothing. Nothing happened to him. He moved to New York and does something with teen shelters. He’s married to some guy; they adopted a kid and a Great Dane.”

Jim sat up fully and scrubbed his hands through his hair, over his face. He wiped at the blood on his face with a sleeve.

“How’d you find out?” he asked.

“Before I finally got my act together with Spock a couple years ago, I was thinking pretty hard on what I wanted, _who_ I wanted, and what it meant for me. I finally admitted, privately, that Spock did more for me than anyone in a miniskirt ever had. It was like all these memories were unleashed. I couldn’t get Jordan out of my head, I felt so bad about what I’d done. Or hadn’t done. I was worried something bad happened to him and somehow it would be all my fault. So I looked him up. Gave him a call. I don’t think he even remembered me, but.” Kirk shrugged. “I don’t know. Seeing him made me let go of something that had been tormenting me for almost my whole life. All my reasons for telling myself I was straight fell apart when I saw this skinny kid who’d been harassed for years grown up, happy and himself instead of hiding and worrying, like I was. It let me stop torturing myself, trying to be something I’m not.” Then Kirk scoffed. “Still waited to actually tell Spock my feelings, of course, like an ass. I thought he couldn’t possibly want me back.”

Jim watched Kirk draw up his knees and balance his elbows on them as he tipped his head back and held his sleeve to his nostrils.

“I’ll get a cloth,” Jim said, and he went into the head to get a hand towel. In the mirror he saw a man with two clear blue eyes, fresh out of excuses.

He tossed the towel at Kirk and sat back down on the floor beside him, legs outstretched. Kirk grunted and balled it up to press against his nose. Jim saw him close his eyes.

“I don’t want to be gay,” Jim told him.

Kirk heaved a congested sigh. “I know. Doesn’t make it not true.”

“I have sex with women. I _like_ sex with women.”

“You make it work with women. You’ve never had sex with someone you honest to God, low down in your soul, wanted so bad it felt like you might die if you couldn’t have them. There’s a difference.”

“I’m attracted to women.”

Kirk cracked one golden eye at him, and one side of his mouth came up in half a smile.

“Women are good looking creatures. Even gay men and straight women and asexuals can admit to it.”

Jim rubbed his eyes, and kept his hands covering his face when he was done. He began to shake.

“Hey,” he heard Kirk say softly. “It’ll be okay, you know. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You’re here,” Jim echoed. “Yeah, you’re here and you’re a fucking mess and you’re having some kind of ill-advised affair with _my_ first officer that doesn’t seem to be making either of you happy. Wow, sign me up; I can’t wait.”

“No one’s saying you have to march in a pride parade next week. Hell, kid, no one’s telling you you have to _call_ yourself anything in particular. I’m a fan of ‘Spocksexual,’ myself.”

A manic bubble of laughter burst out from Jim’s mouth and surprised him.

“So you’re cheating on Spock with Spock right now? Jesus.”

Kirk stretched his legs out alongside Jim’s.

“It’s complicated. Spock left me. I was… distraught. And then I was here, and your Spock was so… well. You know. It was a bit of comfort, and a bit of revenge, for both of us, I think. Not my wisest move, I admit. Or his.”

But Jim was stuck on one sentence. “He _left_ you? What? Why? What did you do to him?”

Kirk sent him an irritated glower from around the bloody rag.

“What makes you think I did anything to him? Why is _that_ what everyone assumes first?”

“Well, if you know me, I know you, and I know because I’m the king of sabotaging a relationship. Remember Ruth? Carol?”

“Both women you didn’t really want to be with because _you like cock_.” Kirk bumped Jim’s shoulder and Jim glared at him. “No, Spock was just – having a prolonged Vulcan freak-out precipitated by my asking him to marry me. And I only found this out by calling the other Spock on New Vulcan earlier. And I’m glad I did because I can’t really imagine going through years of… what I’ve been going through.”

Jim was stuck again though, and couldn’t give the faintest of shits where Kirk had gotten his information.

“Marry you? You asked him to _marry you_?”

Kirk’s small smile was a sad one, and he set his head back against the bulkhead.

“Never wanted to be apart. Starfleet has a regulation, you know, Article 78, Section 9? Couples with Vulcan marriage bonds can never be separated by assignment. I wanted to marry him like a Vulcan, like a human, like a goddamn Klingon if it meant being with him for the rest of my life. Turns out, the right relationship with the right person turns me into a saccharine romantic.”

Jim blinked at him from eyes gone huge and round.

“I didn’t know.”

Kirk patted Jim’s knee.

“He’s the real deal, Jim. You shouldn’t sit on opposite sides of this bulkhead, too busy worrying about what other people might think of you to go take what makes you happiest.”

“What if he leaves me too?” Jim tightened his arms around himself and shivered anyway.

Kirk propped up one knee and took the towel away from his face. He balanced his elbow on his raised knee and let the bloody rag dangle from his fingers like some kind of trophy from a duel. His nose had stopped bleeding.

“He’s different than my Spock,” Kirk said. “With Vulcan gone and his mother dead, I think he knows he can’t hide from his emotions, even if he doesn’t want anyone to know he has them. Plus—” Kirk flicked the slaughterhouse rag at him playfully. “—he kinda told me he’d never do to you what my Spock did to me.”

“I was an asshole tonight. A complete and utter asshole.”

“He loves you anyway.”

Jim pulled his knees up and put his head between them, suddenly breathless.

“That’s a lot to process,” Jim said.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Jimmy: you love him too. It’s a lot less scary than you think it is.”

Jim found that hard to believe. Love seemed to open people up to every kind of pain imaginable, like bacteria on a flayed slice of meat left out of the fridge. Love seemed like too much con and not enough pro. How many happy marriages had he ever seen? How many functional familial relationships? Look at Kirk, having a breakdown because one skinny Vulcan with a bowl cut and a penis left him. No – it must be better to go it alone.

“Jim,” Kirk said. “Tell me you’ve been happy these last few months since you and Spock… parted company. Tell me you haven’t been moping around like your dog just died and I’ll leave you alone and set Spock up with that nice Lieutenant Commander in the science department.”

Jim lifted his head and scowled.

“Dr. Nguyen? He’s totally wrong for Spock! He’s all fussy and uptight and washes his hands like thirty times a day.”

Hazel eyes lit with amusement peered at him from beneath raised brows.

“He’s brilliant, meticulous with his work, hygienic, and not bad to look at if I do say so myself.”

“You’re a dick.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“You’re deliberately harassing me.”

“You’re deliberately ignoring the truth, even though it would make you happy. Do you _enjoy_ cutting off your nose to spite your face?”

Jim got up and yanked the rag away from his alternate. He stalked to the disposal unit and sent it away.

“Why do you want me to go sweep him off his size fourteens anyway?” he asked. “You could stay on this boat _in an advisory capacity_ and have your Spock and eat him too. Or something.”

Kirk shook his head and staggered to his feet. He brushed past Jim and sat in his place at the worktable, smirking at Jim’s chagrined glare. His face was crusted with vivid blood.

“You look like a serial killer,” Jim said as he slid into the opposite chair with a moistened paper towel and flung it at his alternate. Kirk ignored him, but began to dab away at the mess on his face.

“Me and this Spock aren’t for each other,” Kirk said. “We’d never actually be happy. Besides, I’m meeting a certain someone when we dock.” He waggled his eyebrows, and he looked lighter.

“Seriously?”

“Sure.”

“So you’d just – drop everything. For him.”

Kirk’s smile held no shadows. “Absolutely,” he said.

Jim was silent for a while. He hit the replicator for two hot chocolates.

“So how’d you two get together anyway?” he asked. “Did someone travel back in time to plant a foot on your ass?”

Kirk wrapped his hands around his mug, warming them. He took a gulp even though it must have been too hot.

“Remember Janice Lester?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.

Jim didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

“Yeah, like I could forget someone that nuts. Don’t tell me she set us up or something.”

“Well. She switched our bodies. Mine and hers.”

Jim gaped. “No shit.”

“Yeah. She was trying to take over my life. It was… it was awful. But. Spock was there. And he made everything easier. He always does, but I mean… he saw me, you know? Trusted me even though he had no reason to, at first. After it was over, I was still rattled by having been in her body. I just wanted to feel stable, and safe, and like, like I was tied to something real and tangible. And I was just so tired of pretending being with Spock wasn’t something I wanted. I’d fought it for so long, came so close so many times but never, never did what I wanted. It was wearing on me. So I finally just let it go. I went to his quarters that night. And he was –” Kirk’s eyes were on a faraway plane, mesmerized. “—he was tall and strong and beautiful and awkward and warm, and I loved him so much. It was… it was like an epiphany. We were together for over two years.” He cocked his head then, snapping back to reality and meeting Jim’s eyes, his expression shuttered. “Before he left.”

Jim reached over for the pinkened paper towel that languished on the table.

“C’mere,” he murmured, and Kirk leaned over. Jim scrubbed away what Kirk had missed around the creases of his nostrils, the dip above his lip, along his jaw line and cheekbones. “You think I owe this to myself.”

“Do you want to turn around in twenty years find yourself alone, a bitter old man who can’t be close to anyone?”

“Am I as melodramatic as you?”

“Probably.”

“Jesus.”

Jim kept wiping at Kirk’s face. _These lips have kissed Spock’s_ , he told himself. _Two Spocks._ An image of himself and Spock entangled, holding each other close, bare chest to bare chest, cock to cock, hooked Jim’s imagination, tugged at his heart. He pulled back abruptly when his cock firmed up in his trousers.

“Is it worth it?” he asked then, the soiled paper towel balled up in his fist. “All the pain and the bullshit? To be with him?”

Kirk looked at the far wall and tilted his head toward Spock’s quarters on the other side of the bulkheads as if sensing him.

“I know I’ve been a terror since Spock left,” he said. “Even Bones told me to shove it until I can act civilized. But I’ve never once regretted it. I’ve never once said ‘I wish I’d never been with him in the first place.’ He’s – he’s worth all of this. This is nothing in comparison.” He waved a hand in front of his face as if erasing the blood and the worry lines and the heaviness around his eyes. Jim’s heart began to beat a faster, more erratic pace, and his breath came quicker.

The truth was, Spock’s quiet offer of companionship three months ago had tempted him more than he cared to admit. He could imagine it all too readily: the hot tangle of limbs, the fathomless gaze he could lose himself in for too long, a naked vulnerability he had never allowed himself. The way his heart leapt and his blood pumped had sent a shudder down Jim’s spine; he couldn’t want this, couldn’t want _Spock_ so much – it was dangerous. To turn him down and see the look on his face – a flash of pain, covered quickly by stony placidity – nearly tore Jim to shreds. He wanted to reach out then, to pass his fingertips over the dear sharp bones of that face, but he balled his fists and left Spock’s quarters instead. But this heat, the way everything in him cleaved toward everything in Spock, was the life in his veins, the air in his lungs, and being apart from him was a torture for which he could no longer justify being noble. It eased an unnamed pain to acknowlege finally the truth of his desires.

Jim tipped his hot chocolate back into his mouth. When he put the mug down, he fixed his eyes on Kirk’s and clenched his jaw.

“That’s that then,” he said. “There’s only one problem.”

Kirk grinned at him.

“And what’s that?”

“I don’t know anything about guy-on-guy sex.”

Kirk threw his head back and laughed, the uproar reverberating between the bulkheads. He gestured for Jim to come around to his side of the table, and Jim scooted the chair over. Kirk booted up the computer and tapped with enviable ease through a bunch of firewalls and password protected folders, and suddenly Jim realized they were looking at the contents of Sulu’s hard drive.

His very lecherous hard drive.

Jim’s mouth went dry.

“Our helmsman is a connoisseur of gay erotica from all around the galaxy,” Kirk said with a wink.

“You mean porn.”

“Don’t act like my maiden aunt.”

“We don’t have a maiden aunt.”

“What are you, Spock right now? Here.” Kirk clicked on a file named ‘Beach Bum Boys 7.’ “We’ll start off with something pretty vanilla.” _Vanilla_ , Kirk had said, but Jim still felt overwhelmed.

“How about you just tell me what Spock likes and how to do it?”

Kirk looked at him like he just said he wanted to retire to Saskatoon to start looking for Sasquatch.

“No. First off, you’re gonna watch a bunch of Sulu’s porn and get a healthy appreciation for penis so you don’t freak out at an inopportune moment. Honestly, I can’t believe you’ve never even looked before. Secondly, figuring out what Spock likes and how to get him to make that funny noise is an adventure I won’t take from either of you.”

Jim’s cock twitched.

“What funny noise?”

Kirk beamed, clapped him on the back, and hit play.

V

Spock was already on the bridge when the captain arrived three minutes early for alpha shift. He approached the science station, and Spock detected a note of nervous energy from the way the muscles of his face tensed.

“Captain,” Spock said without inflection when Jim came to stand in front of his chair.

“Hey, Spock. Since shift hasn’t started yet, can I talk to you in the ready room for a sec?”

Spock nodded once and rose, careful not to make any superfluous movements. He followed his captain off the bridge and into a space used mostly for senior crew meetings. Spock stood tall and straight, hands behind his back. He gripped his left wrist with his right hand harder than necessary and schooled himself still. He tamed the dread that threatened to overtake him.

“At ease, Commander,” Jim said, and gestured to the seats around the table. He took one, and indicated that Spock should take the one to his immediate left. After a moment’s hesitation, Spock sat, but did not let his spine relax. Jim looked at him with regret plain on his face. “Spock. I’m not here to reprimand you. Quit looking like I’m about to swat your nose with a newspaper.”

“How would you have me look, Captain? I am as I am.”

“Spock. Don’t be like this. I brought you here to apologize for my behavior last night.”

Spock flicked his gaze to Jim’s. Blue eyes peered at him with concern, and Spock had to exert control to calm the fluttering of his heart. He dropped his eyes and looked unseeing into his own lap.

“Continue,” he said.

Jim huffed out a short laugh. “Thank you, First Officer, I will. Could you please look at me, Spock?”

Spock forced himself to comply. Jim looked contrite, but it solved none of Spock’s turmoil. He was still in love with his captain, who could not return his regard. No amount of apologizing could resolve the dilemma, and since returning to his quarters last night feeling a terrible emptiness, Spock had let the notion of transferring off the _Enterprise_ hold court at the forefront of his mind. He had contemplated it fleetingly from time to time since Jim spurned him, but the idea reared up now, monolithic and increasingly tempting. It would not please him to depart, but perhaps it would be easier for him and the unwilling object of his affections if they were to be as strangers.

“Look,” Jim said. “What I said and did last night was out of line. Way, way, way out of line, and I’m so sorry. I never meant to get so out of control and act like such a – jerk. I have no right to dictate anything about your personal life, and I have no right to know what you do with your personal life either. I know that, and there’s no excuse. I just… I want you to know how sorry I am, and that I’ll never do it again.”

Spock’s heart, an illogical organ prone to _feeling_ , felt brittle, ready to crumble. Jim had no intentions of insinuating himself into Spock’s “personal life,” as he termed it, even as friend, and here their desires diverged. He knew what remained of his acquaintance with Jim was over, and he had no recourse. He would leave the _Enterprise_.

He became aware that Jim was regarding him with an expectant expression.

“The standard social convention is that I accept your apology and forgive you, correct?” he asked, his voice hoarse and low.

Jim frowned, then gave a slow nod of affirmation.

“That’s the _convention_ , I suppose, but you don’t _have to_.”

Spock stood abruptly.

“Then I do not. Alpha shift commences, Captain. We should not be late.”

He swept out of the room. For the rest of the uneventful alpha shift, he avoided the stony pallor of Jim’s face, and when his back was turned at the science station, he felt the weight of Jim’s gaze, a heavy burden.

As soon as the captain departed from the bridge at the conclusion of the shift, Spock sent his transfer request. Spock bypassed his usual stop at the science department and went straight to his quarters to begin packing. When he unearthed his duffle from the depths of his closet, his personal padd trilled.

The pixelated message that appeared on the screen when he unlocked it was from Jim.

 _Can I please come over to talk?_ it read. Spock hesitated over the virtual keyboard. If he wrote _yes_ , Jim would be in his quarters, desperate, pleading, but offering nothing that could compel him to stay. If he wrote _no_ , well. Jim wouldn’t be in his quarters at all.

 _Yes_ , he sent, and before even thirty seconds lapsed, Jim had let himself into Spock’s quarters, a blur of command gold and skin flushed pink. He stopped short where Spock had his duffle laid out on his bed. When he looked up at Spock’s face, the only word that could properly describe his expression was ‘desolate.’

“You’re really doing this?” Jim asked, the waver in his voice almost imperceptible. Almost.

“I regret that it has come to this, but I find that my position is untenable. I have come to believe that it would be to the benefit of this ship and its captain if I removed myself from my post.”

Jim’s frown threatened to swallow his face. It would have been comical if Spock was not at that moment learning the practical application of that once-befuddling human term ‘heartbreak.’

“Tell me what to do, Spock. Tell me what to do to make this better and I’ll do it.”

Spock turned away. In his closet were row upon row of pristine blue science shirts in a thermal fabric made just for him. They had the _Enterprise_ insignia embroidered on the breast, and would be worse than incongruous on another ship. It would be illogical to keep them all. It would be illogical, but he began to gather and fold them nonetheless.

“There is nothing,” he said. He felt Jim move closer to him.

“What if – what if I told you I wanted to give it a go? You and me?”

Spock whirled around, a shirt clenched in his fist. He straightened his spine and stood at full height. He met Jim eye to eye.

“Do not mock me, Captain.”

“I’m not. Spock, I swear, I’m not.” Jim took a cautious step forward. “I’ve been – thinking about you. For a long time. I just couldn’t admit it to myself.”

Spock swallowed and shook his head.

“You have made it very clear –”

“Spock. I was being an ass. I spoke to the admiral—”

An involuntary scoff escaped Spock’s throat and he turned back to his packing. He shook out the shirt he’d just wrinkled and smoothed it down to fold and place on top of the neat pile.

“The _admiral_ ,” Spock interrupted Jim, “is barely capable of looking after his own emotional well-being. He should not interfere with yours.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Spock. And I’m sorry he has, too.”

Spock just shook his head and kept packing.

“Spock. Listen to me. Before today went down the toilet, I had this whole thing planned. I was gonna make you dinner— well, I was gonna program the replicator myself, at any rate, and I was gonna brew up a batch of that that special tea you like, because I got it for you last shore leave, but then I didn’t know how to give it to you because we were avoiding each other, and—” Jim’s mouth snapped shut. “Or have I fucked it up so badly that you’re not even listening to me right now?”

Spock couldn’t bring himself to look anywhere but at the shirts collected in his duffle bag. But softly, he said, “I’m listening.”

He heard Jim swallow, and then he was right beside him. He could feel Jim’s body heat.

“I should have said yes three months ago. It would have saved the both of us a lot of grief.”

“Jim. You cannot… force desire where there is none. I regret only that the episode cost us our friendship.”

“I’m not forcing any desires, Spock.” A careful hand came to rest on Spock’s arm. Spock heard him take a deep breath. “I’m – I’m tired of pretending I don’t want you. And I’m tired of not having you around off-duty. I’ve missed you a lot, Spock.”

Spock faced Jim, but he watched the pulse point in his neck rather than his eyes.

“I am not sure a precipitous relationship prompted by careless words from your alternate is wise.”

“It’s not _him_ , Spock. I mean, yeah, he made me face the music, but he didn’t make me imagine this.” With that, Jim seized Spock’s right hand and pressed it to his chest, above his heart. He ducked his head and forced Spock to meet his gaze. “Hey. Can you feel me?”

Where Spock’s fingers weaved between Jim’s, Spock felt a steady thrum of hope and longing and anticipation keep time with Jim’s heartbeat. Beneath it all was a baseline of jealously guarded love. Wonder bloomed in Spock’s consciousness, and he could not tell if it was his own or Jim’s.

“Yeah?” Jim murmured. Spock’s lips parted and he drew in a quick breath. He dipped his head in a nod, and Jim broke into a wide grin. He wrapped his arms around Spock’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss. An exploratory tongue nudged his mouth with gentle insistence, and Spock allowed its entry, every nerve lighting when he swallowed Jim’s moan. Jim pressed himself closer, and they matched plane for plane, bone lashed with muscle. Jim rocked his hips experimentally, and though neither of them had yet been incited to erection, jolts of pleasure thrilled Spock’s spine.

Spock pulled away and pressed his forehead to Jim’s, cradling his face in worship.

“Jim,” he whispered. He felt the curve of Jim’s lips as he smiled.

“You’re stubbly,” he whispered back. A puff of air escaped Spock’s lungs, and through heated skin he could feel Jim’s delight at having made Spock laugh.

“I shave but once in the mornings,” Spock told him. Spock kissed him again, a soft merging, and Jim’s knees threatened to buckle.

Jim broke away from the kiss and hugged Spock harder, his face buried in Spock’s neck. His breath hitched, and Spock put his arms around him to hold him close and steady.

“Jim?” he ventured.

“I’m fine,” Jim said. He pulled away, hands on Spock’s shoulders, and just looked at him, awe in his eyes. “I’m fine, Spock,” he said, and he gave a watery kind of smile.

Spock ushered him down to sit on the bed, and he sat beside him, taking his hand. He slid their palms together, pushed his fingers between Jim’s, clasped his hand tightly and rubbed his thumb into the soft flesh at the base of Jim’s.

“I could bring you a glass of water,” Spock said. Jim covered Spock’s hand with his other one and gave a squeeze.

“I told you, I’m fine. Great, even. This is – this is exactly what I’ve needed. _You’re_ exactly what I’ve needed, Spock.” A human kiss landed on Spock’s cheekbone, then the bridge of his nose, and then on both closed eyes. Jim stroked down the side of Spock’s face. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said. “I was just too much of a coward to admit it. And now it’s like a dam’s breaking inside me. Is that cheesy? That’s cheesy.”

“If the statement is apt, then its metaphorical dairy content seems irrelevant.”

Jim laughed and shuffled closer. He dislodged one of his hands from the knot they’d created and wrapped his arm around Spock’s waist.

“I want you tonight, Spock,” he said. “Is that okay? Too fast?”

Spock touched a thumb to Jim’s lips. His eyes were a clear, fathomless blue under full brows. Spock shook his head.

“I want you, also,” he said. Jim nipped at his thumb through a smile, and then they were kissing again, long hot draws of soft lips and strong tongues. Jim threw a leg over Spock’s, pushed himself closer.

“You’re gonna have to help me out though,” he said. “Never been with a guy. Or a Vulcan. Or a guy Vulcan.”

Spock pressed a hand to Jim’s chest, appreciating the hard musculature it encountered. Jim held it there, fingers tangled.

“We will do only what pleases us,” Spock said. “Without itinerary or goal.”

“Oh, I’ve got a goal.” Jim grinned. “It involves making you come so hard you make a certain sound I may or may not have heard a rumor about.”

“The admiral has been telling tales,” Spock grumbled, but nonetheless he hummed his approval into the kiss Jim pressed to his mouth.

Spock slid his hand further down Jim’s chest, his stomach. He watched Jim’s tongue flicker out to wet his lips, and he heard the wet sound of Jim’s lips parting for an intake of breath. Jim jerked his head in assent when Spock met his eyes, and then Spock lifted the hem of his gold shirt and peeled it off his body. Jim’s hands, as if unsure of their welcome, settled on Spock’s shoulders.

Jim’s hair was ruffled from his shirt, just mussed enough to be endearing. Spock smoothed his hand over the cowlick, trailed his fingertips along the line of Jim’s collarbone, ran his hands over his pecs and the pads of his thumbs over two tight nipples. Jim’s heartbeat came fast beneath his palms, but Spock had more flesh to map and memorize. He followed the fine golden line of hair, barely perceptible but wholly tantalizing, from chest to abs, down to the sweet hollow of Jim’s navel. His slipped his hands around the jut of Jim’s hip bones, which fit perfectly into the cradle of Spock’s palms. He saw Jim’s erection strain against the confines of his Starfleet issue trousers.

Spock felt Jim pulling at his shirt and he drew back to let Jim divest him of it. Jim attached himself like a limpet, fingers through chest hair, leg over hips. Electricity bolted up and down Spock’s spine when Jim straddled him and their cocks bumped through the fabric of their trousers.

“Look at you,” Jim murmured as if to himself. “Look how gorgeous you are.” He petted through Spock’s chest hair, tugging lightly along the way. “I’ve thought about this. Thought about exactly this.”

Spock wet his lips and lay back, pulling Jim to lie atop him, their bodies flush. He cupped Jim’s ass through his trousers and ground their cocks together. Jim gasped and dropped his forehead to Spock’s shoulder, muffled his grunt on the bony clavicle.

“What else?” Spock asked, voice deep and rough. “What else have you thought about?”

“Everything,” Jim moaned. He moved that seeking mouth to the pulse point in Spock’s neck, and on the other side of his head Spock felt clever fingers toy with the point of his ear. He arched into the contact.

“Tell me,” Spock whispered. He held Jim’s hips down and pushed his own against them. Jim pushed a thigh between his legs and began to rock.

“Thought about kissing you,” Jim said as he set his tongue flicking behind Spock’s ear, at the hinge of his jaw. “Thought about smelling you here,” he nuzzled into Spock’s neck, “and here,” he swept his hand over Spock’s erection and cupped it with a tentative touch. “Thought about how your cock would feel in my hand, in my mouth, in my—” He cut himself off with a moan and a shudder and thrust into Spock’s pelvis. “Thought about fucking you. God, Spock, I’ve thought about fucking you so many times.”

Spock pitched his weight in the narrow bunk and rolled them, sending his duffle and neat pile of clothes to the floor without a thought. He rose up on his knees, hands poised on the button of Jim’s trousers. The eager length of Jim’s cock strained against the zip.

“I will divest you of your remaining garments now,” he growled.

“Yeah,” Jim panted. “God, yeah.” And then his trousers and briefs were an inelegant, tangled heap on top of Spock’s forgotten duffle, and Spock was kicking off his own clothes, and they met skin against skin, cock against cock in a shock of sensation so intense that Jim cried out, clutching Spock’s biceps in a convulsive grip.

Spock seized Jim’s mouth with his own for a heated, sloppy kiss that had Jim gasping when Spock moved down to map the planes and dips of Jim’s body with his tongue. Spock reached the thickening line of bronze hair that flared out into a lush thicket around Jim’s engorged genitals and he buried his nose there to scent him deeply. Jim made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, his fingers scrabbling for purchase at the base of Spock’s skull. At the tender strip of softness where Jim’s thigh creased in connection to his body, Spock set his sucking mouth, and Jim whined out an elongated expletive that sizzled down Spock’s spine. Spock spread Jim’s legs and pushed his body between them, shoulders pushed up under knees, and then Spock slid his slavering mouth over the head of Jim’s cock.

Jim shouted out an indeterminate vowel sound and gripped Spock’s hair. Both hands came to rest on his head, where he stroked through Spock’s hair as if in apology.

“God, that’s good, Spock,” he said through labored breath. “That’s so good. Suck my cock just like that, yeah.”

One hand cradling Jim’s balls and the other holding the base of Jim’s cock steady, Spock bobbed up and down on the full shaft with eager abandon. He derived his own pleasure from this, from the weight and flavor of Jim on his tongue, from the fullness in his mouth, from fingers in his hair and the sounds his fervent sucking elicited. He pushed his own erection into the bed, unable to contain himself. Jim’s breath hitched, and he seemed to choke off impending whines, but when he spoke it was with a filthy reverence that made Spock’s cock throb.

“Look at you, sucking my cock,” he said, “fuck, you were made to do this, made to suck my cock, weren’t you Spock? You love it, love my cock. Spock, Spock, _fuck_ , that’s so _good_ , Spock, _Spock_.”

Spock rubbed the pad of his thumb lower on Jim’s perineum, and Jim gave up speaking altogether, pressing himself back into the mattress with a wail. Spock went lower still and brushed the tiny wrinkled aperture of Jim’s anus, which quivered against the touch. Jim moaned above him and his hands in Spock’s hair tightened. One drifted downward and pushed Spock closer by the shoulders. Jim’s heels drummed against Spock’s sides, and, encouraged, Spock pressed his thumb more firmly, rubbing in a gentle circle to relax the tight bud of muscle.

“Spock,” Jim gasped. “Wait.”

Spock moved away from Jim’s anus and cupped his testicles again. He lifted his head off Jim’s cock and quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Don’t wanna come yet,” Jim told him. He tried to pull Spock up, but Spock was immovable when he wished it, and he wished it now.

“I desire it,” he said. “To be the instrument of your pleasure. Oblige me, Jim?”

Blue eyes went hazy, swollen mouth slack, and Jim gave a languid nod. Spock returned to his task with singular concentration. When saliva slicked the length of Jim’s cock and dribbled down over his balls, Spock drew back and pushed his hands into the backs of Jim’s knees to expose his winking pink hole. When he swiped his tongue over it, Jim gave an echoing bellow and spewed a litany of curse words. With his own hands he pulled his legs higher, crushed to his chest, and as he jerked Jim’s cock with one hand, Spock laved all around the outside of Jim’s anus, flicked each wrinkle, sucked on the sensitized rim with lusty gusto.

“Oh fuck, I had no _idea_ ,” Jim said amid his nonsensical babble. “Jesus _fuck_ , Spock, yes.”

Spock hummed and pushed his face deeper into Jim’s perineum. This was an intimacy he had only imagined he’d be granted. Jim’s hole spasmed around Spock’s invading tongue, and Spock reveled in the dark musk of it, in the rich, heady flavor of Jim’s innermost core, in how his name spilled from Jim’s lips like a benediction.

When Spock lifted his head, Jim whimpered at the abandonment and cast a pleading look at him. Spock tilted half a smile at him.

“Do you consent to manual penetration at this time?” he asked. Jim’s eyes crossed for a moment.

“Oh God, I think I’d consent to pretty much anything right now, Spock,” he said. “Do it. Please, please, do it.”

Spock gently moved Jim’s scrotum from his path and slid his middle finger into Jim’s ass straight up to the third knuckle. Jim grunted, but Spock began to thrust it in and out, and he moved it in widening circles. With his fingertip he caressed the smooth, constricting inner walls. The tight heat wreaked havoc on his controls, and from the tip of his own penis came a dollop of lubricating fluid that slicked his shaft. Jim had begun to rock down into the point of connection.

“One more,” Spock said, and he withdrew his hand. Two fingers made a tight press, but Jim’s body accepted it readily, and he gave a low rumble of appreciation. Avidly Spock watched his fingers disappear into the pink hole, framed by saliva-slick hair, and his cock throbbed in lament of his neglect. Spock drew his fingers in and out, paying careful attention to stimulating the walls of Jim’s rectum, and finally he alighted on the small protrusion that elicited a full wail from his lover’s throat.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Spock could feel Jim’s toes curling against his ribs. “Oh fuck, right there, Spock!”

Spock hummed and pressed Jim’s prostate again, then hunkered down between his thighs to take Jim’s cock down his throat. He pumped it firmly into his suckling mouth as he worked his fingers deep into Jim’s ass, and then Jim was making small, thwarted sounds in the back of his throat, his thighs clenching around Spock’s ears, hands twisting in Spock’s hair, back arching in a painful convex curve. His orgasm burst into Spock’s mouth even as his blinding ecstasy blasted through Spock’s own consciousness. Spock moaned around the load and swallowed it, but some dribbled from his mouth and when he pulled away to lap it back up, the final spurts wrung from Jim’s dick striped his cheeks, his nose, his lips.

Jim gave a weak groan and collapsed boneless onto Spock’s bed panting, his legs falling open. Spock wiped his face and chased the globs of semen with his tongue before he crawled up and fell to his side, curled against Jim’s sated body. He pressed his nose into Jim’s armpit when Jim gathered him closer, heaved in a deep dose of the pheromones there and began to jerk himself in a punishing rhythm against Jim’s hip. Jim turned and wriggled down to kiss him, hand on cheek, then he whispered, “Let me?”

The sound that escaped Spock’s throat was a sort of desperate sigh, and when Jim pushed him onto his back and set tentative lips to the crown of his cock, Spock wanted to watch. He wanted to, but the joy of Jim’s touch on his body forced his eyes shut. Jim had no suction, and his teeth mashed against Spock’s flesh, and then he choked a little when he tried to take too much too fast, but all Spock felt was Jim’s desire to make him feel as replete in bliss as Jim felt now.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Jim,” he murmured with a touch to Jim’s cheek. “Go slowly. Yes.”

Spock eyes slid shut and he gave himself up to Jim’s cautious experimentations. Eventually Jim got some semblance of a rhythm and began to apply suction, and he caught him with the sharp edges of his teeth less and less, and Spock felt the heat and pressure of orgasm build in his testicles and at the base of his spine. He had to signal Jim, had to let him know what was coming; his hand tapped an erratic warning on his shoulder and swallowed the verbal notification that had formed on his lips when his breath caught. He must have been clear enough, because Jim stilled, and the hand around his cock squeezed tighter, pumped harder into that sucking mouth, and Spock’s orgasm came as a blast of light and color behind his eyes and down his spine, rushed through the very depths of his being and burst onto Jim’s waiting tongue. Dimly Spock heard his lover cough, but pleasure had overwhelmed his senses, made limp his limbs. When he was able to crack his eyes open again, he found Jim nestled into his side, arm and leg thrown over him in a possessive tangle.

“Good?” Jim asked, his lips feather-soft on Spock’s shoulder.

“Indeed,” Spock replied. He brought a hand up to stroke down the muscular length of Jim’s arm.

“I’ll need practice,” Jim said. “Lots and lots of practice.” Spock could feel the curve of his smile on his skin. “So. You know. You can’t leave.”

Spock linked their fingers.

“I will not,” he said, and he felt a cool wash of relief and gratitude flow from Jim to himself.

Jim shimmied up to lay his head on the pillow, and Spock turned to gaze into blue eyes.

“I’m glad,” Jim said. He rubbed his thumb on Spock’s cheekbone, memorizing.

Spock hesitated. Finally, he asked, “Have you any misgivings?”

He was gratified that Jim did not answer immediately, that he lay there, touching Spock’s face, and gave the question its due contemplation.

“I’ve got all my own issues here, Spock,” he answered after a silence. “I’ve let them bog me down too long. I’m not saying they’ve magically disappeared, but I feel, I don’t know, lighter? I know I’ve still got to work through stuff. But. I feel like it’s gonna be okay, you know? It’s you and me, and we’re gonna be okay.”

A tightness that had gathered in Spock’s chest once his ardor had cooled began to ease. He nodded once.

“I have not played chess in 3.4 months,” Spock said. Jim beamed at him, but made no move to get up. He traced the bow of Spock’s lips.

“There was so much more I wanted to do with you tonight, Spock, and none of them involved capturing your queen.”

“Perhaps playing in the nude will be provocative while we pass the duration of our refractory periods.”

Jim’s face lit with amusement and he laughed, the sound a riot between the bulkheads.

“Oh my God, you’re hiding a dirty mind in that big sexy brain of yours!”

“I find myself… inspired by the view,” Spock said with a demure lilt, and cast his gaze down the impressive musculature of his lover’s bare body. Jim mock-preened, and Spock indulged in the visual feast he presented. Spock placed a hand on firm abdominal muscles, brushed upward to feel defined pectorals. Jim sighed under the attention, but abruptly Spock sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood to set up his dusty three-dimensional chess board.

“Hey!” When Spock looked back over his shoulder, Jim was pouting, a petulant Adonis amid the bedding. “I didn’t even get to hear your funny sound!”

Spock laid out the pieces one by one. He could feel Jim ogling him – his small buttocks, his muscular back, the breadth of his shoulders. It inspired a feeling of triumph. He made a show of setting up the board with languorous deliberation, and he sent Jim an indulgent sideways look.

“ _T’hy’la_ ,” he said, “you have a lifetime to _earn_ my ‘funny sound.’”

Spock straightened, and with a contained gesture, invited Jim to sit at the table. Jim came when beckoned, but before he sat down, he pressed a kiss to the corner of Spock’s mouth.

“And I do intend to use it, Mr. Spock,” he whispered.

VI

When Kirk caught sight of Spock at the San Francisco space port, he had to force himself to keep from visibly buzzing with anticipation. As it was, he had been so jittery and keyed up for the days leading up to dry dock that McCoy threatened to sedate him and keep him strapped to a bed until it was time to go. He refrained from shoving people out of the way, but when he was finally in front of his lover, long parted from him, he found himself stopping short, his breath caught in his throat.

“Jim,” Spock said. His voice was rougher, quieter than it used to be. His eyes were clouded, his hair grey. His hands were linked behind his back, and he cocked his head when he offered a tiny smile.

Kirk swallowed and tamped down on the trembling.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, hoarse. He grabbed Spock’s wrist and led him away from the crush of the crowd and the roving of curious eyes. “Where are you parked?”

“Jim, cease rushing.”

Outside the bustle of the port, there were fewer harried people jostling them, and no one paid any mind when a human was pulled into elderly Vulcan arms and held tightly, as if it were a punishment. Finally, the tension roiling in his gut gave way and Kirk let himself sag in Spock’s embrace, shivering.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Kirk said into the column of Spock’s throat. “I can’t believe I’m feeling you right now.” The arms locked around Spock’s neck squeezed harder, but Spock didn’t protest. He rubbed up and down Kirk’s back.

“We will go to Sarek’s condominium and I will make you a soothing beverage.”

Kirk snorted and pulled away. He put his hands on Spock’s shoulders and regarded him for a moment. The years had been kind, but they had left their mark. He _was_ more aged than a full-Vulcan would be at a hundred and sixty years old. Kirk’s hands came up to cup his jaw. This was his Spock; he was still in there, looking at him with such naked affection. It had been so long that Kirk could barely remember what it felt like to be on the receiving end of it, and he had avoided his younger self and the Spock who loved him for the past few weeks just so the jealousy wouldn’t eat him alive. He’d occupied himself by consulting in the engineering decks, though Scotty seemed a little anxious and territorial by halfway into the first week.

“Long as it’s not that tea I can’t stand,” he said. Spock lifted an eyebrow, but took one of Kirk’s hands in one of his and led him to his aircar in short-term parking.

Once they got to the condo, though, Kirk didn’t feel up to a coffee or a hot toddy or anything. He was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse in bed. He said so, and Spock only nodded. In the bedroom, they disrobed, and in Kirk’s heart he felt a heavy tenderness as Spock revealed his body. He’d always been thin, but now his muscle tone was gone, his skin sagged, and he had a tiny, soft belly on him dusted with silver hair. Kirk laid a hand on one flat pectoral.

“How long has it been?” he asked. “Since you saw me?”

Spock placed both his hands over Kirk’s on his chest, held him there.

“Much too long, Jim,” he said. “It does not bear thinking about.” He pulled Kirk down on the bed and they arranged themselves on their sides, face to face. A gnarled hand rested on Kirk’s hip. He stroked through Spock’s chest hair, like he used to do. He watched Spock deflate with an inaudible sigh, eyes sliding shut. Softly, Jim kissed him.

“It’s over,” Kirk said. “After this we’ll go back to your work at the VSA, I’ll get a little ship to call my own, and everything will be fine.”

Spock only grasped him tighter, pressed their bodies closer. Kirk’s heart swelled and he looped his arm around his lover, tucked his head under his chin, breathed in the deep warm scent of him, and listened to the steady cadence of his own heartbeat until he fell asleep. He dreamed of places he’d never been before.

When he woke, the afternoon sun was throwing long shafts of light across the bedroom floor. He was sprawled on top of Spock, who lay serenely beneath him, awake and silent.

“What are you thinking about?” Kirk asked in a croak. He cleared his throat.

“A different time,” Spock said with a finality that meant the subject was closed. Kirk lifted his head to look into Spock’s face.

“You okay?”

“You are here with me,” Spock said, and it was answer enough. Kirk kissed those thin lips, coaxed them open as he trailed a hand down Spock’s chest to rub over an olive nipple. Kirk’s tongue followed his fingers, teeth worrying the sensitized flesh until Spock hissed and held Kirk’s hips against his own. Kirk was surprised to find his own hard cock griding against Spock’s; some things apparently hadn’t been affected by age.

“Eager, Spock?” he murmured into the solid chest with a smirk.

“I have waited a very long time for this,” Spock said, and Kirk swore he could hear a pout. He grinned up at the pursed lips and furrowed brow.

“Then I won’t keep you waiting any longer,” he said, and he bent over Spock’s lap to take the needful cock into his mouth. Spock made a strangled sound and dropped his head to the pillow. Jim moaned around the throbbing length – he loved sucking Spock, loved the flavor of it and the sense of power it gave him. Loved to be the focal point of all Spock’s attention. He was leaning sideways over Spock, and it gave Spock the opportunity to fondle his ass with the hand that wasn’t occupied in his hair. He stroked Kirk’s cheeks, and Kirk was forcefully reminded of the last time they’d been together, right after he’d asked Spock to be his forever, but before the desolation of the next morning: he lay on his stomach after they’d both come, after Kirk had made declarations of his love, and Spock trailed his hands over and over the downy, near-invisible hair on Kirk’s ass. Kirk asked him what he was doing, lazy and sated but vaguely amused and a little turned on and definitely head over heels in love, and Spock had said only “committing you to memory.” The sweetness of the moment had been spoiled by all that had come after it – even the careful touches Kirk had allowed the younger Spock to bestow upon his unbending body had been bitter ashes in his mouth – but now Kirk moaned and pushed back into the contact. This Spock – this Spock wouldn’t disappear like so much vapor on the wind. This Spock would stay.

Spock’s fingers, thickened and surely arthritic, brushed over Kirk’s hole. He circled it gently, but with a firm insistence until the muscle gave way and allowed the entry of one dry fingertip. Spock retreated and advanced like this for some time, eventually slicking the way with saliva, until Jim found himself rocking back into a finger buried all the way inside him. Then Spock withdrew and patted Kirk on the swell of one asscheek. Kirk took the cue and maneuvered himself on top of Spock, knees on either side of his head, bodies together in a heated press, and planted his asshole over Spock’s mouth. Kirk gave a shout as Spock’s hands spread him wide and his tongue delved deep; he’d missed this, Spock’s specialty – single-minded attention to his greedy asshole. He was fairly sure Spock could eat his ass for hours and be perfectly content, but Kirk had yet to test that theory since it drove him out of his mind and he always ended up with his face mashed against the pillows, ass hiked in the air begging to be fucked. At the impatient bump of Spock’s dick, leaking copiously its personal lubricant, Kirk remembered himself and got back to fellating his lover with renewed zeal.

When Kirk thought he couldn’t take another lap at his asshole, he swung himself round and straddled Spock’s lap, facing him. He rose up on his knees and snugged the blunt head of Spock’s cock against his hole, but Spock staid the descent of his hips.

“Do you not require more stretching?” he asked.

Kirk pumped Spock behind himself, rubbed the convenient Vulcan lube around his hole.

“Just you,” Kirk said. “Just want your cock and nothing else.” With that, he sank down on Spock’s erection. The burn was a purifying fire, and the heavy, hot fullness was so consumptive that Kirk forgot about all the time that lay between them, forgot his misgivings and his battered heart.

He rose and fell in a measured rhythm, the thick slide of Spock’s penis inside him a dizzying sensation that lit all of Kirk’s nerves and radiated outward so he became a thing of pure pleasure. Beneath him, Spock flexed and thrust and rolled his hips to match Kirk’s movements. He batted Kirk’s hand away from his penis and seized it himself, stroking it with the firm grip and upward twist Kirk favored, a technique that spoke of years of practice – years Kirk had yet to experience. Kirk cried out and met Spock’s hooded eyes, enflamed by the slack mouth and the tiny sounds escaping with each breath. Kirk leaned down and braced his hands on Spock’s shoulders so he could thrust back on to his cock with more urgency.

“Needed this,” he panted, “needed this so bad, Spock, you don’t know.”

Spock craned his neck up to capture Kirk’s mouth. Kirk moaned and pulled away, sat up again to rock into the penetration. He grabbed Spock’s hand and shoved two of his fingers into his mouth, tongue slipping between them even as his teeth closed gently around the sensitive flesh between Spock’s knuckles. When he sucked hard, Spock jerked and arched under him, body twisting, and finally he keened out a desperate, quavering sound that sputtered and choked, and Kirk hummed out a little laugh around his mouthful.

 _There it is_ , he thought with a measure of victory, and he fucked himself down on Spock’s cock harder and faster. He bit and sucked Spock’s fingers, and he would have said a lot of things if he weren’t gagged, would have told Spock he loved him, missed him, needed him always, but then he couldn’t think anything at all because Spock’s cock was hot and hard and fucking him deep, fucking the come right out of him when orgasm bore down like thunder through his wracking body. As he spurted thick stripes of come onto Spock’s chest, Spock bellowed and lurched upward, wrenching his hand from Kirk’s mouth and wrapping his arms around him as he pushed into Kirk’s body and came, his semen hot enough that Kirk could feel it flooding him.

Afterward, they slumped together on the bed, and Kirk slid off to the side, dislodging Spock from his ass. Kirk reached a hand over Spock’s chest, and Spock met it with his own, his first two fingers clamping around Kirk’s. They were silent, and the sun’s rays made their way across the room.

Eventually they had to move again. Spock turned Kirk over and passed a clean cloth over his perineum and his raw anus. Kirk sighed as Spock cleaned him with his usual focus. When he was finished, he encouraged Kirk onto his side and spooned up beside him, arm slung over his torso, knobbly knees pushed into the backs of Kirk’s own. He felt Spock nose into the space between his neck and shoulder, felt the contented sigh as it passed over cooling sweat. He held Spock’s hand over his heart.

“How are our counterparts?” Spock asked, voice pitched low.

“Sickening,” Kirk replied. He felt Spock’s stomach quake with a silent laugh, and added, “I don’t know if anyone else has noticed yet. I mean, Bones, obviously, but I wonder if I just see because it’s really obvious to me, or if everyone can see what I can.”

“I recall that crew members were surprised, shocked, and in some cases, appalled by the our involvement, when we made it public.”

“Hm. Yeah. I just – did we look like that in the beginning? Like a pair of lovestruck idiots?”

“I am certain such a description could never have applied to me,” Spock said. “I have always conducted myself in a very dignified manner.”

Kirk snickered. “Oh, shut up.”

“What does ‘lovestruck’ look like on a stern Vulcan countenance?” Spock’s arm tightened around Kirk. Kirk closed his eyes and sent up a wish that this moment last as long as possible, that time and reality never encroach upon it.

“I could feel your eyes follow me everywhere, and they burned. Maybe your expression didn’t change, but something did. An energy, maybe. Between us. And I was probably grinning like a maniac for months. I don’t know how everyone couldn’t tell.”

“Perhaps our comportment was more discreet than our feelings.”

“Must have been.” Kirk traced the veins on Spock’s hand. The skin was thinner, and smooth as petals. Kirk’s heart ached, and he lifted Spock’s hand to press a kiss to each big knuckle. He felt Spock’s shudder, his long exhale.

“Being with you like this, Jim, is a priceless gift,” Spock said.

“Yeah,” Kirk replied. “Yeah. I’m glad, too.”

The sun poured in through the windows and warmed their skin.

Epilogue

The House of Sarek had resources and influence that stretched beyond the bounds of Vulcan-Past. Enough to keep kith and kin in luxury on Earth. Enough to build this sprawling house on New Vulcan. Enough to commission a personal space craft, if it was deemed logical. Spock remembered his Kirk’s reaction when he first realized he’d married into aristocracy some time after the incident with V’Ger: “Does this mean I’m your _consort_?” he’d asked with a cheeky grin.

This Kirk, the one currently stretching in a sensuous display on Spock’s bed, was not his Kirk. Not yet. They had not bonded. They had not gone through death and destruction and come out the other side to meet one another again. They had not fought and forgiven and parted and reunited so many times that Spock didn’t care to keep count.

He’d made many mistakes in his life.

This Kirk, young and supple and beautiful, belonged to someone else. Belonged to a Spock whose myriad missteps were only choices waiting to be made instead of regrets to be counted like so many worthless coins.

Spock had great plans for him.

Kirk rose, all naked splendor, and crossed the room to sling his arms round Spock’s neck and plant a kiss to the side of his head. Spock leaned back in his chair, away from the console he had been bending formulas in. Kirk propped his chin on Spock’s shoulder, and Spock rubbed Kirk’s forearm where it circled his neck.

“So why’d you ask me to take off today?” Kirk asked. “You know I can’t stand a mystery.”

Spock closed his eyes. When he opened them again he turned around in his chair and stood, setting his hands on Kirk’s shoulders. Kirk looked up into his face with those mercurial eyes – a honeyed green now, when he was feeling happy and a little amorous.

“Wash and dress, Jim,” Spock said, “and come with me.”

While Kirk did as told, Spock left the bedroom and stood in front of window that took up the entire width of the living space wall. Outside, the sands of this planet rolled a dull red far into the distance until it met the hazy horizon. It was not Vulcan, and it would never be. He feared his people would never recover from the wound of Vulcan’s absence, would never stand on these sands and feel an elemental belonging. He knew it was an illogical fear; new generations would be born here, bred beneath this bruise-colored sky, and they would never know the pain of the death of their home. These days (as his human colleagues might once have said, while they still lived), Spock was comfortable with the occasional bouts of illogic inherent in his nature.

In the aircar on the way to the space port, Kirk tried to wheedle from Spock their destination, his purpose, his plans, but Spock remained coy and kept conversation maddeningly circular. By the time they were at the port, Kirk had threatened to tear out his own hair and wore a pout the size of one of New Vulcan’s moons. He brightened when Spock pulled into port parking.

“We going somewhere?” he asked. “Pre-honeymoon, maybe?” He winked. Spock gifted him a small smile. They got out of the car and Spock led them to a private dock, had his ID scanned, and made his way down the long indoor pier that housed shuttle-sized crafts. “C’mon, Spock,” Kirk said then, amusement having evaporated. Spock forced himself to look at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Spock stopped in front of a large door and ushered Kirk through it. In the large space sat a small, sleek, modern craft. To Spock’s eye, it looked clunky and old-fashioned. It reminded him of how out of step he was here, in this time.

“This is the _Hermes_ ,” Spock told him. “I commissioned it for personal use. It can achieve warp eight.”

“She’s a looker,” Jim said, but he was insincere, distracted, searching Spock’s impassive face. “Spock. I’ve got a bad feeling. Tell me what you’re gonna tell me.”

“It is a fully equipped science vessel, designed to be operated by a single passenger.”

“Spock. Please.”

Spock met eyes muddied by mounting anxiety. He opened the door of the _Hermes_ and entered. He beckoned Kirk to join him, and he did, arms crossed, grudging. Spock herded Kirk into the operator’s seat, and then he leaned against the dash facing him.

“I have developed the formula for returning to our timeline,” he said. Kirk’s demeanor remained stony. “Since returning to New Vulcan 6.3 weeks ago, I have been perfecting the process for wormhole creation, and I believe I can even send you back to the same day you were transported here. I regret that the exact moment cannot be pinpointed.”

“Send me back,” Kirk said. “Alone.” He went an unnatural shade of grey and dropped his gaze to his hands. Spock used a lifetime’s worth of controls to keep his chest from crumpling under the weight of his grief, longing and regret.

“It is better this way.”

Kirk shot to his feet and slammed a fist on the console beside Spock.

“Goddamnit Spock! Tell me how this could possibly be better! Tell me why you’re sending me away from you!” His fists fell open, sapped of strength, and Spock eased him back into the chair. He knelt before him, uncaring of his protesting knees. He held both Kirk’s hands in his.

“Can you honestly tell me that you would be happy here, captaining a small science vessel and coming home to your elderly lover every few months?”

“I can tell you I wouldn’t be happy without you. That’s the truth.”

“If you go, you can rejoin your Spock when he leaves Gol,” Spock said.

“You’re my Spock.”

“Neither of us believes that, _t’hy’la._ ”

“ _Don’t call me that!_ ” Kirk yanked his hands from Spocks and balled them into fists when he crossed his arms. Spock sighed.

“When you are with me, you think of him,” Spock said, and Kirk’s grimaced as if it the truth were painful to him. “And, Jim, when I am with you, I think of my bondmate, as he was when we got older. With all that happened between us, good and bad.” Spock had told Kirk much of what had come to pass in his time as they spoke into the long nights, savoring each other’s skin and scent and company.

Kirk pressed his lips together to suppress the churning miasma of anger and heartbreak and resentment that Spock felt before Kirk had wrenched from his touch.

Spock rummaged in a pocket and produced a slip of paper, on which he had hand-written a list in cramped script. He pulled Kirk’s right hand out from beneath his armpit and pressed it into his palm.

“These are people, places, and events to avoid,” he said, and Kirk’s eyes flicked up to meet his in surprise. “I find myself… desirous of a different outcome than I saw in my own time, and rather indifferent to warnings against altering the future.”

“Cheating, Spock?” Kirk murmured.

“I have been very selfish in keeping you. I wanted one last touch so badly, and I prolonged your stay with me to gratify my own needs. But it is past time you return to your home.”

“Why can’t you come with? Go back to – to before your Jim was consumed by the Nexus, and just make sure he doesn’t go.”

Spock shook his head and staggered to his feet, bones creaking. He leaned back against the dash again, and Kirk looked up at him from a mottled face. The anger had drained from him, and now he looked only bewildered and impossibly young.

“If you are successful with that list,” he nodded to the page Kirk clutched in trembling fingers, “what transpired in my past will no longer have happened, and what I think of as my time, my life, will cease to exist. There is no place for me there, once you have corrected my mistakes, and made your own. Besides.” Spock gave a very human shrug. “I owe a debt I cannot possibly hope to repay to the people of this universe whose lives I destroyed through my own failure.”

“No,” Kirk said with a shake of his head. “You have to stop doing that to yourself, Spock. Nero destroyed the _Kelvin_ and Vulcan. You bear no burden for that. Where’s the logic in guilt and self-flagellation?”

“In my old age, I have accepted my naturally occurring emotional responses, Jim,” Spock said. “My feelings of culpability are not subject to rationality, and I have reconciled that within myself.”

“Still. You didn’t do anything wrong, Spock.”

Spock nodded in acknowledgement if not agreement. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I can contribute to the rebuilding of Vulcan society here. I can be of use, rather than a – ah, what is your term? – third wheel, when your Spock returns to you. Which he will.”

“How do you know?” Kirk demanded. “I mean, say I go back, and because I’m sitting around waiting for him, I don’t do something that originally caused him to come back to me in your time, and then I’m over there, all alone in the ‘right’ time, and I never see him – or you – again?”

“An external force reunited us following our separation,” Spock said. “Regardless, I have come to believe that I am incapable of achieving Kohlinar, and in the years since you have been parted from me, I have ceased to view that as a personal failing.” Spock let himself lean forward and place a hand on Kirk’s shoulder, as much a gesture of comfort for himself as for Kirk. “Jim,” he said. “Have faith. Spock will return to you. You will know joy.”

Kirk’s breath shook as he exhaled. “And what about you? Don’t you deserve some joy, Spock?”

Spock brushed a lock of hair from Kirk’s forehead.

“There is a Terran author who once wrote, ‘There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.’”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

Spock smiled. He bent to kiss the furrowed brow, cup the flushed cheek.

“When I am alone and missing you, I will tell myself that you are happy, and I am wise, and it will be enough.” He moved into the open door, drank in the sight of his young lover’s face. “Everything is set to go. All you have to do is get the craft out of New Vulcan’s atmosphere, and the rest is programmed.”

“Spock.” Kirk’s eyes were bright, and a bittersweet pain flared in Spock’s chest. “I love you. You know that.”

Spock stepped out of the _Hermes_. He lifted his hand in the _ta’al_ and said, “Live long and prosper, _t’hy’la._ I have been, as ever, proud to have you at my side.”

The door sealed shut. Spock, heart heavy, told a deck hand to open the hangar doors in preparation for a departure. Outside, he watched the _Hermes_ blast into the sky with a majestic burst of flame from the engines, like a phoenix reborn. When he got into his aircar, he hesitated to turn in the direction of the House of Sarek. He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers ached. He turned east, where no transport roved, where untamed desert beasts still roamed, where the colony partitioned off its borders as if by unspoken mutual consent of all the citizenry. Spock turned east and pressed forward.

He wanted to meet the horizon.

  
 **End**


End file.
